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HEEBEET   SPENCEE 


CopyngJit,  190^ 
By  Fox,  Duffield  &   Company 

Published  September,  1904 

Printed  in  America 


THE  UNIVERSITY  PdCSS,  CAMBRIOGE,   U.S.*. 


CONTENTS 

Page 
Spencer's  Contribution  to   the   Concept   of 

Evolution 7 

His  Theories  of  Education 119 

Personal  Reminiscences  by  James  Collier, 
FOR  Nine  Years  the  Secretary  and  for 
Ten  Years  the  Amanuensis  of  Spencer       185 


HERBERT  SPENCER  AND  HIS 
CONTRIBUTION  TO  THE  CON- 
CEPT  OF   EVOLUTION 


HERBERT    SPENCER 

AND  HIS  CONTRIBUTION  TO  THE 

CONCEPT  OF   EVOLUTION 


SINCE  Spencer's  death,  there 
ah'eady  have  appeared  many  re- 
views and  estimates  of  his  life- 
work.  Their  number  is  likely  soon  to  be 
increased  by  the  reading  of  his  "  Auto- 
biography "  which  we  now  have  in  our 
hands.  The  new  perspective  in  which 
this  work  enables  us  to  see  our  philoso- 
pher is  a  sufficient  justification  for  many 
attempts  afresh  to  sum  up  and  to  char- 
acterize what  he  did  for  philosophical 
inquiry,  and  what  his  influence  meant. 
Features  of  Spencer's  activity  which 
we  have  heretofore  been  obliged  to  view 
9 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

as  it  were  from  a  distance,  and  to  know 
only  through  the  necessarily  inadequate 
reports  of  his  personal  friends  and  dis- 
ciples, are  now  brought  near  to  us,  and 
are  exhibited  in  the  decidedly  clear  light 
of  his  own  deliberate  and  wholesomely 
straightforward  confession.  What, 
then,  is  the  consequence  of  reconsid- 
ering the  ideals  and  the  methods  of 
Spencer's  philosophy  in  the  light  of  his 
autobiography  I  To  this  question  the 
following  paper  is  an  attempted,  and 
admittedly  partial,  contribution. 

Spencer's  life-work  is  a  part  of  a  very 
large  historical  movement.  For  the 
sake,  therefore,  of  giving  the  whole 
discussion  its  due  setting,  I  shall  begin 
with  a  few  comments  upon  the  general 
history  and  meaning  of  the  concept  of 
Evolution.  I  shall  then  review  what 
the  "Autobiography  "  tells  us  about  the 
origin  and  significance  of  Spencer's 
own  view  of  Evolution.  Thirdly,  I 
10 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

shall  attempt  a  sketch  of  this  view  itself 
in  its  finished  form.  Fourthly,  I  shall 
close  with  some  critical  observations 
upon  the  significance  of  Spencer's  work 
as  a  thinker. 


11 


SOME    ASPECTS   OF  THE    HISTOEY   OF    THE 
CONCEPT   OF  EVOLUTION 

THE  names,  Theory  of  Evolution, 
Philosophy  of  Evolution,  Dar- 
winism, and,  less  frequently, 
Spencerianism,  have  now  entered  into 
general  literature  as  denoting  (in  the 
minds  of  various  people  who  use  them) 
a  decidedly  variable  collection  of  doc- 
trines, all  of  which  have  to  do  with  the 
growth,  or,  in  general,  with  the  natural 
origin  of  things.  The  doctrines  in  ques- 
tion either  have  actually  originated 
during  the  nineteenth  century,  or  else 
have  been  restored  to  a  former  promi- 
nence in  the  course  of  that  period.  If,  as 
is  very  frequently  the  case,  a  biologist 
uses  any  of  the  terms  in  question,  he  is 
12 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

likely  to  confine  their  meaning,  in  the 
special  discussion  in  which  he  chances 
to  be  engaged,  to  doctrines  that  have 
directly,  and  perhaps  exclusively,  to  do 
with  the  origin  of  various  animals  or 
plants  from  earlier  living  forms,  through 
a  gradual  and  natural  transformation. 
If  a  sociologist  or  historian  employs 
such  a  term,  he  may  give  it  a  special 
reference  to  the  doctrine  of  the  animal 
descent  of  man,  or  he  may  merely  be 
referring  to  theories  regarding  the  origin 
or  growth  of  languages,  institutions, 
or  civilizations.  If  a  philosopher  or 
theologian  speaks  of  a  theory  of  evolu- 
tion, he  may,  on  the  contrary,  include 
doctrines  which  refer  to  the  entire 
process  of  the  knowable  universe,  or  at 
least  to  some  aspect  of  that  entire  proc- 
ess. In  Spencer's  own  usage  the  term 
"  Evolution  ' '  was  a  name  for  one  of  tivo 
processes  which  together,  according  to 
him,  comprise  the  *'  whole  range  of 
13 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

natural "  events,  so  far  as  these  can  be- 
come known  to  us.  These  processes  are 
for  Spencer  Evolution  and  Dissolution. 
Since,  by  a  doctrine  of  evolution,  one 
who  uses  that  word  may  thus  refer  to 
very  inclusive  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
to  decidedly  special  theories,  there  is  a 
good  deal  of  confusion  regarding  what 
is  meant  by  an  "  evolutionist."  An 
evolutionist,  in  the  minds  of  some  peo- 
ple, means  simply  a  man  who  leaves 
God  out  of  account  in  trying  to  explain 
the  origin  of  things,  substituting  natural 
agencies  for  creative  acts.  In  the  usage 
of  others,  stress  is  laid  upon  the  notion 
that  the  "  law  of  evolution  "  is  supposed 
somehow  to  guarantee  the  triumph,  in 
the  long  run,  of  whatever  makes  for 
"  progress,"  so  that  an  evolutionist  shall 
be  one  who  believes  that  Nature  tends 
towards  the  constantly  increasing  per- 
fection of  the  world,  or  at  least  of  man. 

For  still  others,  amongst  whom  are  not 
14 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

a  few  liberal  theologians,  an  evolution- 
ist may  be  a  theist,  who  holds  that 
gradual  processes  of  evolution  constitute 
God's  method  of  creation.  A  more 
technically  limited  usage  defines  an 
evolutionist  as  one  who  systematically 
uses  the  history  of  things  as  a  means 
for  explaining,  or  estimating,  their  na- 
ture and  value.  In  this  sense  an  evolu- 
tionist is  one  who,  for  instance,  if  he  is  a 
philologist,  attempts  to  throw  light  on 
the  grammar  or  on  the  etymology  of  a 
language  by  means  of  a  comparative 
study  of  the  evolution  of  the  group  of 
languages  to  which  it  belongs ;  or  who, 
if  he  is  a  moralist,  uses  a  theory  of  the 
origin  of  conscience  to  explain  and  to 
define  the  authority  of  conscience. 
And,  finally,  the  term  evolutionist  may 
be  limited  in  its  application,  as  before 
indicated,  so  as  to  refer  to  one  who  holds 
opinions    regarding    the    evolution   of 

some   single   class  of  natural  objects, 
15 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

such  as  stellar  and  solar  systems,  or 
animals,  or  social  institutions. 

Thus  it  becomes  frequently  uncertain 
what  is  implied  by  any  particular  usage 
of  the  term  evolutionist ;  and  the  popu- 
lar mind  is  frequently  confused  by  the 
mistakes  made.  Nevertheless,  it  is  true 
that  the  various  tendencies  to  which 
the  name  is  applied  actually  have  a 
good  deal  in  common.  And  one  reason 
why  it  is  hard  to  agree  upon  any  ter- 
minology whereby  the  various  sorts  of 
opinion  in  question  can  be  kept  apart 
lies  in  the  fact  that  the  tendency  to 
believe  that  things  in  general  have  been 
subject  to  some  sort  of  evolution  is  one 
of  the  oldest  of  human  tendencies. 
The  origin  of  the  philosophical  doctrine 
of  evolution  is  lost  in  a  remote  antiq- 
uity. In  some  sense,  such  as  is  still 
frequently  attached  to  the  word,  the 
early  Greek  philosophers  of  Nature 
were  all  of  them  evolutionists.  The 
16 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

denial  of  evolution,  or  the  definite 
subordination  of  the  processes  of  growth 
to  some  other  type  of  supposed  realities, 
is,  in  philosophy,  rather  the  later  result 
of  certain  theoretical  or  theological 
considerations  than  the  earlier  preju- 
dice of  the  philosophers.  The  first 
philosophical  attempts  to  explain  things 
take  naturally  the  form  of  evolutionary 
speculations.  In  giving  a  very  new 
definiteness  and  a  great  wealth  of  novel 
detail  to  such  speculations,  the  philos- 
ophy of  the  nineteenth  century  simply 
carried  to  a  higher  stage  tendencies 
which  had  resulted  from  the  most  ele- 
mentary forms  of  the  scientific  interest 
in  the  universe.  As  this  view  of  the 
historical  place  of  the  concept  of  evo- 
lution in  the  history  of  human  thought 
is  popularly  somewhat  neglected,  we 
must  dwell  upon  the  matter  for  a 
moment. 
Man's  speculations  as  to  the  origin  of 
2  17 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

thiiiij^s  take  their  earliest  known  form 
in  those  "  creation-stories  "  which  are 
found  in  so  many  primitive  religions. 
The  "  creation-stories  "  are  themselves 
often,  in  part,  mythical  accounts,  not 
only  of  various  creative  and  inventive 
feats  of  deities  and  demi-gods,  but  also 
of  quasi-evolutionary  processes,  —  that 
is,  of  processes  conceived  after  the 
analogy  of  known  natural  processes  of 
generation  and  growth.  A  creation- 
story  is  usually  also  a  genealogy.  Un- 
expected growths,  and  more  or  less 
magical,  that  is,  in  the  primitive  sense, 
physical  processes,  aid  or  thwart  the 
deeds  of  creators;  and  only  upon  de- 
cidedly higher  levels  of  religious  thought 
do  there  appear  gods  powerful  enough 
to  create  some  whole  order  of  things 
by  their  o^vn  directly  exerted  fiat. 
Even  they  may  be  thwarted  here  and 
there  by  the  rebellion  of  their  creatures, 
or  by  the  devices  of  rival  gods ;  so  that 
18 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

it  is  hard  to  devise  a  theology  which 
shall  reduce  everything  to  the  result  of 
one  creative  will.  Something  that  has 
a  nature  of  its  own  usually  stands  over 
against  the  mythical  creator,  as  the  ma- 
terial which  he  "fashions,"  as  the 
chance  which  limits  him,  or  as  the 
enemy  who  uses  more  or  less  magical 
devices  to  baffle  him. 

Even  primitive  mythology  thus  pre- 
pares the  way  for  an  evolutionary 
fashion  of  thinking  in  which  orderly 
processes  take  the  place  of  fiats.  Such 
a  fashion  of  thought  gets  free  as  soon 
as  philosophy  fairly  begins.  Hindoo 
thought  contains  a  good  deal  of  evo- 
lutionary speculation.  But  Greek 
thought,  in  the  pre-Socratic  period, 
begins  the  very  process  of  which  our 
latest  evolutionary  thinking  is  the 
legitimate  outcome,  —  an  outcome  deter- 
mined, indeed,  by  a  vast  increase  of  a 
knowledge  of  nature,  but  impossible 
19 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

witliout  the  persistent  use  of  certain 
leading  ideas  which  the  Greeks  abeady 
possessed,  and  which  we  still  employ- 
in  a  way  by  no  means  wholly  unlike 
their  own.  We  have  no  place  here 
for  any  account  of  Greek  opinion  in 
the  first  period  of  ancient  philosophy; 
but  we  may  lay  stress  upon  two  or  three 
leading  ideas  which  belonged  to  the 
pre-Socratic  age,  and  which  have  been 
potent  even  in  the  latest  evolutionary 
speculation. 

The  first  is  the  idea  that  Nature  is  a 
region  where  mutually  opposed  pro- 
cesses, in  the  long  run,  balance  each 
other,  producing  as  their  combined 
result  a  vast  circuit  or  cycle  of  changes, 
whereof  all  special  processes  of  growth 
and  decay  are  incidents.  This  leading 
idea  (since  often  represented  in  popular 
thought,  side  by  side  with  ideas  that 
have  resulted  from  later  and  higher 
grades  of  human  knowledge)  is 
20 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

obviously  suggested  by  a  compara- 
tively crude  induction ;  which  the  early 
Greek  thinkers  soon  rather  hastily 
universalized,  so  as  to  apply  it  to  all 
things.  Night  follows  day,  and  day 
night;  the  seasons  alternate;  the 
changes  of  the  weather,  the  periodic 
sequences  of  periods  of  drought  and  of 
rain,  the  ebb  and  flow  of  prosperity, 
suggest  what  our  modern  moralizing  or 
weather-wise  countryman  still  summar- 
izes by  various  proverbs  about  the  com- 
pensations of  Nature,  such  as:  "It  is  a 
long  lane  that  has  no  turn,"  or,  "  What 
goes  up  must  come  down."  In  brief, 
Nature  alternates  between  opposite  ten- 
dencies. The  early  Greek  cosmogonist 
generalizes  from  such  processes.  They 
indicate  how  the  whole  of  Nature  has 
been  formed  and  will  pass  away,  — 
doubtless  to  be  renewed  again  in  dis- 
tant ages.     From  the  "  Boundless  "  of 

Anaximander,  certain  "  opposites  "  dif- 
21 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

f  erentiate ;  these,  combining  and  recom- 
bining,  lead  to  the  complex  world  that 
now  we  see.  But  all  these  things  will 
pass  back  again  into  the  Boundless, 
"  paying  the  penalty  of  the  injustice  " 
of  their  separate  existence.  "The  way 
up  "  and  "  the  way  down"  are  the  two 
opposed  roads  that  the  fire-stuff  of 
Heraklitos  follows,  as  it  takes  on  the 
transient  form  now  of  this,  now  of 
that  thing.  It  is  governed  —  this  living 
fire-stuff  —  by  "measures."  Nothing, 
therefore,  is  really  gained  or  lost  when 
new  things  arise,  or  when  former  things 
vanish.  Something,  vaguely  conceived 
as  "  justly  "  invariant,  persists,  not  as  a 
fixed  thing,  but  as  a  "measure,"  all 
through  the  process  of  natural  change. 
It  is  as  when  one  ware  is  "  exchanged  " 
for  another;  for  so  is  the  fire-stuff 
"  exchanged  "  for  all  things,  and  they 
in  turn  for  it.'    Fixed  law  governs  the 

whole  process  of  this  evolutionary  ex- 

22 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

change,  whereby  everything  is  gener- 
ated, and  in  its  turn  is  dissolved. 
There  is  no  special  creation  about  the 
process.  It  is  an  evolution.  Later 
cosmogonists  give  us  other  accounts  of 
the  moving  principle  that  determines 
the  evolution  or  the  dissolution  of 
things;  but  the  general  notion  that  a 
vast  rhythm  of  growth  and  decay,  or 
of  "mingling"  and  "sundering,"  of 
"thickening"  and  "thinning,"  or  of 
some  such  opposed  processes,  deter- 
mines the  evolution  of  things,  as  well 
as  their  passing  away,  and  the  equally 
prominent  notion  that  this  rhythm  is 
subject  to  regular  law  of  some  sort, 
these  soon  become  prominent  ideas  of 
early  Greek  physical  speculation. 

The  second  leading  idea  here  in  ques- 
tion is,  that  the  evolution  of  mind,  that 
is,  of  the  souls  of  men  and  of  animals, 
is  an  incident  of  this  general  process, 

and    is    governed    by    whatever    laws 
23 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

determine  the  evolutionary  process 
viewed  as  a  whole.  The  early  Greek 
physicist  is  unquestionably  under  the 
influence  of  primitive  animism  to  such 
an  extent  that  he  conceives  Nature  as 
in  some  sense  alive  through  and 
through.  But,  unlike  the  savage,  he 
does  not  look  to  gods,  or  to  spirits,  or  to 
other  capriciously  interfering  wills  to 
explain  the  origin  of  anything  in  the 
natural  world.  Nature  is  a  realm  where 
a  power,  or  where  perhaps  (as  in  case 
of  the  doctrine  of  Empedokles)  two 
opposed  powers,  shall  determine  in  a 
regular  way,  and  in  accordance  with 
pervasive  law,  the  whole  process  of 
evolution.  This  determining  power  (or 
possibly  pair  of  powers)  is  at  once  a 
material  power,  and  also  more  or  less 
alive.  It  is  "  divine,"  *'  wise,"  "  intelli- 
gent," or  something  of  the  sort.  But 
it  is  also  uniform,  impersonal,  and  in- 
separable from  its  own  expression  in 
24 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

the  course  of  the  physical  world.  It  is 
distinctly  "Nature,"  and  not  any  god 
or  demon  ruling  over  Nature  from  with- 
out, or  interfering  with  Nature.  It 
takes  form  equally  in  our  bodies  and  in 
our  soul-life.  All  Nature  is  thus  an  evo- 
lution, or  a  dissolution,  of  the  embodi- 
ments of  this  power.  And  our  souls 
arise  in  a  natural  way  in  the  course  of 
this  universal  process. 

A  third  leading  idea,  due  to  the  fact 
that  Greek  philosophy  grew  up,  so  to 
speak,  upon  the  seashore,  is  that  the 
origin  of  life  from  the  sea,  or  from 
"  slime,"  or  from  some  close  connection 
between  the  processes  which  connect 
land,  sea,  and  air,  must  be  viewed  as  a 
central  fact  of  importance  for  the  com- 
prehension of  this  whole  evolutionary 
story.  This  idea  of  the  origin  of  the 
organic  from  the  inorganic  appears  in 
different  degrees  of  prominence  in  dif- 
ferent philosophies,  and  is  of  a  some- 
25 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

what  secondary  importance.  But  it 
survives  in  subsequent  speculation. 
Nor  was  it  a  mere  guess.  It  was  due 
to  a  genuine,  even  if  very  crude,  ob- 
servation of  Nature. 

In  later  Grreek  philosophy,  the  con- 
ceptions of  evolution  and  dissolution, 
while  retaining  a  significant  place  in 
the  greater  systems  of  ancient  thought, 
became  somewhat  subordinate,  and 
sometimes  obscured,  by  the  predomi- 
nance of  other  speculative  interests. 
One  notion  which  tended,  by  compari- 
son, to  render  both  evolution  and 
dissolution  less  important  for  a  philoso- 
pher's survey  of  the  universe,  was  a 
leading  philosophical  idea  very  differ- 
ent from  the  "  special  creation  "  which 
the  nineteenth-century  evolutionist  gen- 
erally regards  as  his  principal  enemy. 
This  was  not  the  idea  of  any  lawless- 
ness or  capriciousness  of  things,  or  of 
the  prevalence  of  any  miraculous  inter- 
26 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

ference  with  the  course  of  Nature,  but 
rather  the  idea  of  the  Eternity,  and 
so,  very  frequently,  of  the  temporal 
permanence,  not  only  of  the  universe, 
but  of  all  the  greater  distinctions  ivithin 
the  universe,  —  an  idea  which,  in  the 
form  of  the  doctrine  of  the  "  perma- 
nence of  species,"  did  indeed  directly 
oppose  itself,  in  the  last  century,  to 
Darwinism.  This  special  idea  of  the 
permanence  of  species  had  then  long 
since  been  united,  by  Christian  theol- 
ogy, with  the  conception  of  a  special 
creation,  whereby  all  the  permanent 
species  had  been  initiated.  But,  in  its 
more  articulate  forms,  the  idea  of  the 
permanence  of  the  specific  forms  or 
' '  natures ' '  of  things  came  into  later 
philosophy  not  at  all  as  a  corollary  of 
the  idea  of  a  "special  creation,"  but 
rather  through  the  influence  of  Plato 
and  Aristotle.    And  so  this  leading  idea 

of  later  Greek  philosophy  was  a  part 
27 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

only  of  the  general  conception  that  the 
world,  together  with  all  of  its  most 
rationally  significant  features,  is  eternal. 
Plato's  world  contained  a  realm  of  flux, 
which,  so  far  as  it  was  flux,  was  evil 
and  untrue,  and  a  realm  of  eternal 
ideas,  which  were  both  true  and  good, 
and  which  were  accordingly  above  all 
change.  Aristotle  did  indeed  lay 
great  stress  upon  the  evolution  every- 
where present  in  the  sublunary  region 
of  "genesis  and  corruption."  But  in 
this  region  it  was  each  individual  thing 
which  grows  and  then  passes  away. 
The  "  forms  "  which  are  responsible  for 
the  evolution  of  individuals  are  as  eter- 
nal as  the  Platonic  ideas.  They  there- 
fore do  not  evolve.  Plotinus  conceived 
an  universe  which  might  indeed  be 
called,  in  one  sense,  an  "  emanation " 
from  its  eternal  first  principle.  But 
this  emanation  is  not  a  temporal  pro- 
cess. It  has  always  taken  place,  in  a 
28 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

series  of  descending  grades  of  perfec- 
tion, which  temporally  appear  side  by 
side.  Only  individual  things,  and  souls, 
go  through  processes  of  growth  or  of 
progress,  of  decay  or  of  falling  away 
from  perfection.  In  the  universe, 
viewed  as  a  whole,  all  the  main  distinc- 
tions are  everlasting. 

This  conception  of  the  eternity  of  the 
forms  of  things  is,  historically  con- 
sidered, by  far  the  most  significant  op- 
ponent that  the  philosophical  doctrine 
of  evolution  ever  has  had  or  ever  can 
have.  It  is  primarily  the  expression, 
not  of  primitive  superstition,  nor  yet  of 
a  theistic  bias,  but  of  a  very  highly 
developed  conception  of  things  which 
tends  in  itself  rather  towards  panthe- 
ism than  towards  creationism.  This 
doctrine  of  the  eternity  of  the  forms 
was  suggested  to  the  philosophical 
mind  by  three  different  leading  inter- 
ests:—  (1)  An  interest  in  astronomy; 
29 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

(2)  an  interest  in  logic  and  in  mathe- 
matics ;  (3)  an  interest  in  the  permanent 
significance  of  ethical  truth.  As  to 
the  first  of  these  interests  (ancient  in 
origin,  obvious  in  Plato,  and  still  more 
pronounced  in  Aristotle)  it  had  led 
early  astronomers  to  a  long  continued 
observation  of  the  heavens,  and  to  an 
impression  that  there ^  at  least,  all  (ex- 
cept the  fact  of  the  motion  of  the  va- 
rious heavenly  bodies)  was  eternally 
changeless,  while  the  movements  in 
question  were  themselves  regularly 
repeated,  and  of  invariable  type.  The 
second  of  these  interests  was  rendered 
impressive  by  the  whole  development 
of  early  Grreek  arithmetic  and  geometry, 
and  by  the  Socratic  and,  still  more,  by 
the  Platonic  and  Aristotelian  studies  of 
the  nature  of  logical  truth.  The  third 
interest,  prominent,  but  undeveloped, 
in  Socrates,  reached  a  classic  perfection 
of  expression  in  Plato,  and  has  ever 
30 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

since  deeply  influenced  the  course  of 
human  thought.  It  was  one  form  of 
the  concern  in  what  Emerson  has  called 
"  the  sovereignty  of  ethics." 

The  result  of  these  three  interests 
was  that  the  evolutionary  aspect  of  the 
universe  went  into  the  background,  al- 
though never  disappearing^  in  later  Grreek 
speculation.  Plato,  Aristotle,  Plotinus, 
all  gave  attention  to  the  growth  and  to 
the  decay  of  individual  things,  and  to 
the  laws  of  individual  or  of  social  prog- 
ress and  degeneration;  but  for  them 
the  universe,  taken  in  its  wholeness, 
could  not,  in  view  of  the  just-men- 
tioned reasons,  be  conceived  in  terms 
of  all-embracing  evolutionary  formulas. 
Both  the  Stoics  and  the  Epicureans, 
returning  in  part  to  earlier  forms  of 
physical  speculation,  made  the  evolu- 
tionary aspect  of  the  universe  more 
prominent  than  did  the  systems  just 

mentioned ;  but  they,  too,  subordinated 
31 


HERBERT     SPENCER 


evolution  to  other  aspects  of  the  uni- 
verse ;  for  they  were,  above  all,  ethical 
philosophers. 

Christian  theology,  uniting,  as  it  did, 
Platonic  and  Aristotelian  conceptions 
with  the  Theism  of  the  prophets  of 
Israel,  and  of  their  Jewish  successors, 
was  led  to  a  sort  of  theological  com- 
promise which  long  remained  classic. 
A  conception  of  an  initial  special  crea- 
tion —  a  conception  due  to  old  Testa- 
ment traditions  —  was  brought  into  a 
sort  of  synthesis  with  the  Hellenic 
doctrine  of  the  eternity  of  the  ' '  na- 
tures" or  "forms"  of  things.  An 
"  order  of  Nature,"  occasionally  inter- 
fered with  by  miracle,  and  supple- 
mented by  the  unceasing  creation  of 
new  human  souls,  consequently  took 
the  place  of  the  older  Greek  philo- 
sophical conception,  but  still  made  the 
latter  predominant  in  the  explanation 
of  all  natural  truth.  The  evolutionary 
32 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

aspect  of  things  was  thus,  indeed,  by- 
reason  of  the  creationism  of  the  creed, 
placed  still  farther  in  the  background ; 
although  more  or  less  heretical  reviv- 
als of  the  evolutionary  ideas  of  the 
foretime  were  present  amongst  the 
opinions  that  the  Christian  theologian 
from  time  to  time  had  to  encounter  in 
controversy. 

Modern  philosophy,  breaking  away 
indeed,  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
from  the  regular  course  of  theological 
tradition,  was  still,  at  the  outset,  under 
influences  which  gave  it  comparatively 
little  opportunity  to  pay  renewed  at- 
tention to  the  evolutionary  aspect  of 
things.  Amongst  these  influences  to 
which  modern  philosophy  was  at  first 
subject,  was  that  of  the  physical  sci- 
ences, as  they  developed  from  Gralileo 
to  Newton.  Modern  science,  in  this 
its  first  great  movement,  did  not  con- 
tribute to  an  interest  in  the  growth  of 

8  sa 


HERBERT     SPENCER 


things,  nor  promise  to  throw  much 
new  light  upon  origins.  For  just  as 
the  ancient  astronomy  had  seemed  to 
prove  the  eternity  of  the  heavenly 
spheres,  so  the  new  astronomy,  despite 
the  enormous  alteration  in  the  concep- 
tions of  the  physical  world  which  it  so 
quickly  produced,  gave  in  a  new  form 
the  impression  to  the  philosophers  that 
the  permanence  of  the  celestial  system, 
and  in  fact  of  the  whole  mechanical 
order  of  Nature,  is  much  more  impor- 
tant than  is  any  process  of  an  evolution- 
ary sort  that  seems  to  take  place  in  the 
realm  of  Nature,  whether  celestial  or 
terrestrial.  The  typical  seventeenth- 
century  philosophers,  despite  their 
occasional  evolutionary  speculations, 
conceived  the  world  as  a  whole,  and 
the  living  organisms  in  particular,  as 
complex  machines.  Such  views,  in- 
deed, logically  involved  the  conception 
that  these  machines,  in  so  far  as  they 
34 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

had  a  beginning  at  all,  must  have  had 
a  purely  natural  origin,  and  this  logical 
necessity  is  variously  recognized;  but 
is  left  as  a  subordinate  fact.  The 
highly  synthetic  doctrine  of  Leibnitz, 
in  its  great  effort  to  unify  the  organic 
and  the  mechanical  aspects  of  Nature, 
found  a  place  for  a  sort  of  evolution, 
whereby  special  organic  unities  could 
have  been  developed.  But  the  Leib- 
nitzian  metaphysical  conceptions  re- 
mained too  remote  from  phenomenally 
verifiable  processes  to  make  possible 
any  articulate  conception  of  organic 
evolution.  And  so,  once  more,  during 
not  only  the  seventeenth,  but  the  early 
part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  there 
was  illustrated  the  notable  truth,  so 
much  overlooked  by  modern  evolution- 
ists of  the  Spencerian  type,  —  the  truth 
that  the  great  historical  enemy  of  the 
evolutionary  interest  in  philosophy  has 

been,  not  "  supernaturalism,"  nor  yet 
35 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

the  doctrine  of  "  special  creation,"  but 
the  tendency  to  conceive  the  universe  as 
an  eternal,  and  so,  temporally  viewed,  as 
an  essentially  permanent  order,  whose 
laws  may  be  studied,  and  whose  events 
often  include  what  we  call  growth,  but 
whose  main  outlines,  classifications, 
processes,  forms,  are  the  same  yester- 
day, to-day,  and  forever;  so  that  the 
story  of  the  origins  of  things,  even 
when  true,  is  of  secondary  import. 
Astronomy,  mechanical  science,  mathe- 
matics, logic,  ethics,  all  furnish  motives 
which,  justly  or  unjustly,  have  led  men 
to  emphasize  this  view  of  things.  Ac- 
cordingly, ivhenever  these  motives  are 
predoininant  in  special  science  and  in 
philosophy,  evolution  is  likely  to  be  sub- 
ordinated, overlooked,  or  denied.  Other- 
wise, however,  evolutionary  views  are 
ancient  and  natural  results  of  a  study 
of  Nature. 

Not  until  towards  the  end  of   the 
36 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

eighteenth  century,  after  a  new  Hu- 
manism had  taken  possession  of  the 
historical  movement  of  life  and  of 
thought,  did  the  time  recur  for  mak- 
ing evolutionary  concepts,  of  one  sort 
or  another,  philosophically  important. 
In  order  to  narrate  the  tale  of  the  rise 
of  the  evolutionary,  or  as  one  may  (for 
the  age  in  question)  call  it,  the  histor- 
ical movement,  one  would  have  to  re- 
count the  annals  of  the  growth  of 
Romanticism,  to  describe  the  move- 
ment of  post-Kantian  Idealism,  and 
also  to  give  an  account  of  the  revival 
and  of  the  rapid  progress  of  the  or- 
ganic sciences,  and  of  historical  schol- 
arship, in  the  whole  period  between 
1770  and  1830.  Sufdce  it  here  to  say 
that,  in  the  years  in  question,  in  Ger- 
man, and,  to  some  extent,  in  French 
thought,  the  centre  of  scientific  and 
philosophical  interest  was  shifted,  at 
first  slowly,  then  rapidly,  from  a 
37 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

primary  concern  for  the  relatively 
mechanical  explanation  of  Nature,  to 
an  intense  devotion  to  a  following  of 
the  growth  of  things.  It  is  true  that 
this  shifting  of  interest  did  not  ob- 
scure, in  the  minds  of  those  who  were 
interested  in  the  more  exact  physical 
sciences,  the  belief  that  whatever  his- 
torically happens  in  the  natural  world 
is  also  subject  to  definable,  necessary, 
and,  in  some  sense,  mechanical  laws. 
The  trains  of  thought  which  led  to  the 
modern  doctrine  of  energy,  and  which 
express  themselves  in  Spencer's  own 
conception  of  the  Persistence  of  Force, 
are  of  the  general  logical  type  which 
was  predominant  in  the  thought  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  But  nineteenth- 
century  thought  is  not,  as  a  whole, 
one-sided.  It  declines  to  ignore  the 
mechanical  aspect  of  things  for  the 
sake  of  emphasizing  its  interest  in  his- 
tory. Yet,  as  a  fact,  it  is  still  more 
38 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

intensely  interested  in  the  historical 
aspect  of  things  than  it  is  in  their  per- 
manent nature.  It  is  the  century  of 
the  organic  and  humane  sciences;  and 
to  these,  despite  the  vast  advances  of 
physics,  chemistry,  and  mathematics, 
the  interest  of  the  nineteenth  century 
subordinates  the  unchanging,  the  eter- 
nal, the  unhistorical  aspect  of  Nature. 
The  nineteenth  century  fully  recog- 
nizes the  latter;  but  this  aspect  of  re- 
ality cannot  hide  from  its  view  the 
significance  of  evolution.  Geology, 
embryology,  comparative  philology,  the 
history  of  religion,  of  social  institu- 
tions, of  art,  of  politics,  anthropolog- 
ical research,  sociological  generalization, 
—  these  are  the  great  new  achievements 
of  nineteenth-century  science.  The 
general  doctrine  of  evolution,  in  its 
recent  forms,  is  merely  the  culmina- 
tion and  natural   outgrowth  of  these 

combined   and    afi&liated  types  of   re- 
39 


HERBERT      SPENCER 


search.  The  great  battle  for  the  recog- 
nition of  the  evolutionary  aspect  of 
things  was  already  fought  and  won,  in 
principle,  before  1830.  The  traditional 
theological  creationism  of  Christian 
doctrine  was  certain  sooner  or  later 
to  give  way  before  the  interests  of  a 
scientific  and  philosophical  movement 
which  had  already  added  to  the  fabled 
word  of  Galileo:  "And  yet  it  does 
move,"  the  further  watchword,  —  a 
counter-assertion  to  the  doctrine  of  a 
rigid  and  eternal  mechanical  order: 
"And  yet  it  does  grow."  The  problem 
of  modern  philosophy  was  thus  the 
reconciliation  of  real  evolution  with 
real  mechanism  (since  the  nineteenth 
century  believed  in  both) ,  rather  than 
the  task  of  overcoming  the  theological 
doctrine  of  "special  creation."  The 
theologians,  to  be  sure,  were  long  un- 
aware of  the  meaning  of  the  new  ten- 
dencies. The  general  public  also  had 
40 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

to  be  instructed.  A  Darwin  was  needed 
to  show  the  naturalists  how  to  bring 
their  own  long-since  pronounced  evolu- 
tionary tendencies  to  a  focus.  There 
was  and  still  is  room  for  many  men 
such  as  Spencer  to  throw  light  upon 
the  synthesis  which  the  new  age 
needed.  But  the  hindrance  which 
had  prevented  the  philosophy  of  the 
seventeenth  century  from  reviving,  in 
full  force,  early  Grreek  evolutionism, 
was  not  Christian  theology  (which  that 
philosophy  already  treated  with  be- 
coming independence),  but  was  the 
predominence  of  the  mathematical  and 
mechanical  conceptions  in  the  natural 
sciences  of  that  earlier  time,  and  the 
consequent  absence  of  an  interest  in 
the  growth  of  things.  This  hindrance 
lost  its  main  force  when  the  philosophy 
of  the  Romantic  Period,  and  the  revival 
of  the  historical  and  organic  sciences 

after  1815,  insured  henceforth  due  at- 
41 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

tention  to  the  evidences  of  evolution. 
From  that  time  on,  the  process  was  an 
inevitable  one,  which  the  various  nat- 
ural sciences  had  only  to  apply  in  their 
special  realms,  and  which  theologians 
were  bound  to  follow,  like  the  rest,  of 
mankind,  whenever  their  own  time  was 
ripe.  '^  Special  creation,"  viewed  as  a 
positive  dogma,  was  quite  as  much  dis- 
credited by  the  spirit  of  the  philosophy 
of  the  seventeenth  century  as  it  could 
be  by  our  own.  Yet  evolution  could 
not  take  its  place  in  philosophy  until 
the  time  had  come  for  recognizing  the 
historical  aspect  of  things. 

So  much  for  a  few  words  by  way  of 
correcting  a  false  perspective  in  which 
the  history  of  the  idea  of  evolution  is 
still  popularly  viewed.  As  a  fact,  crude 
inductions,  in  the  infancy  of  science, 
began  already  to  point  towards  the 
later  doctrine.  And  the  tendency  to 
exclude  the  miraculous  from  science  is 
42 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

precisely  as  old  as  is  Greek  philosophy 
itself.  Nor  were  even  the  early  Greek 
forms  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  mere 
guesses,  as  some  writers  still  like  to 
represent.  They  were  hasty,  but,  for 
their  time,  very  sane,  and  by  no  means 
wholly  unjustified,  results  of  the  early 
observation  of  Nature.  They  already 
included:  (1)  The  notion  that  the 
evolutionary  processes  are  differentia- 
tions, whereby  variety  grows  out  of 
seeming  simplicity;  (2)  The  further 
notion  that  our  souls  have  the  same 
sort  of  natural  genesis  that  our  bodies 
have;  (3)  The  idea  that  the  whole 
evolutionary  process  is  due  to  a  single 
law,  or  pair  of  laws,  and  not  to  special 
creations;  (4)  The  conception  that 
life  originates  from  the  inorganic  (from 
"  earth,"  from  the  sea,  from  "  slime," 
etc.)  ;  and  (5)  The  thesis  that  there  is, 
in  the  universe  at  large,  a  rhythm  of 

evolution  and  dissolution,  which  is  also 
43 


HERBERT      SPENCER 


connected  with  a  rhythm  of  "  thicken- 
ing "  and  "  thinning,"  of  "  cooling  "  and 
"heating,"  or  of  other  processes;  that 
is,  with  a  rhythm  of  the  general  type 
of  the  "integration"  and  "disinte- 
gration "  of  which  we  have  later  heard 
so  much.  And  it  was  a  keen  if  crude 
watching  of  natural  things  which  made 
all  these  ideas  plausible  to  the  early 
Greek  philosophers. 

For  the  rest,  the  historical  motives 
which  so  long  delayed  the  transfor- 
mation of  these  first  crude  inductions 
into  higher  scientific  shapes,  were  by 
no  means  solely  either  theological  or 
anti-scientific.  They  had  to  do  with 
extremely  important  and  rational 
motives,  both  of  science  and  of  phi- 
losophy, —  motives  which  emphasized 
the  need  of  a  recognition  of  the  more 
permanent  aspects,  both  of  Nature  and 
of  universal  law.  Thinkers  were  thus 
long  held  back  from  learning  more 
44 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

about  evolution,  not  merely  by  the 
survival  in  culture  of  a  belief  in  mi- 
raculous creations,  but  still  more  by  the 
growth,  in  their  own  leading  minds,  of 
an  interest  in  mathematics,  in  ethics, 
and  in  the  very  permanence  of  natural 
law  itself.  Truth  of  the  unchanging 
types  thus  often  obscured,  in  men's 
thoughts,  truth  of  an  historical  nature. 
Thus  the  delay  of  the  recognition  of 
evolution  by  Science  and  by  Philosophy, 
was  merely  an  incident  of  an  inevitable 
one-sidedness  of  human  thinking ;  but 
this  one-sidedness  was  in  no  wise  un- 
wholesome, and  was  due  to  an  over- 
emphasis of  motives  that  were,  in  part, 
both  philosophic  and  scientific. 


45 


HERBERT      SPENCER 


II 


IN  the  England  in  which  Herbert 
Spencer  grew  up,  it  was,  neverthe- 
less, the  case  that,  in  the  period  of 
his  boyhood  and  youth,  all  these  evolu- 
tionary tendencies  were  indeed  remote 
enough  from  the  minds  of  the  popularly 
well-known  thinkers.  For  the  move- 
ment of  the  Romantic  philosophy  was 
hardly  known  in  Great  Britain;  the 
Continental  revival  of  historical  scholar- 
ship had  as  yet  but  little  affected  the 
leading  tendencies  of  English  learning ; 
the  conservatism  and  caution  of  British 
scientific  men,  as  well  as  the  decidedly 
settled  theological  traditions  of  the 
country,  alike  served  for  years  to  keep 
the  "  development  theory,"  so  far  as  it 

was  discussed  at  all,  far  in  the  back- 
46 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

ground.  In  contributing  so  largely  to 
the  growth  of  the  new  science  of 
geology,  British  research  was  indeed 
laying  a  most  important  part  of  the 
foundations  for  the  coming  evolution- 
ary conceptions  of  the  latter  half  of 
the  century;  but  the  meaning  of  this 
movement  in  geological  research  was 
still  unrecognized.  It  was  true  of 
Grreat  Britain,  therefore,  that  a  public 
acknowledgment  of  the  significance  of 
evolutionary  ideas  was  still  a  long  way 
from  the  focus  of  attention;  and  it 
was  also  true  that  the  influence  of  a 
conservative  theology  was  here  far 
more  potent  in  discouraging  independ- 
ent philosophical  inquiry  than  was  the 
case  in  Germany.  It  is  not  surprising, 
therefore,  that,  when  Spencer  ulti- 
mately came  to  consciousness  regard- 
ing his  own  doctrines  (ignorant  as  he 
always  remained  of  their  historical 
relationships),  he  should  henceforth 
47 


HERBERT      SPENCER 


regard  the  revival  of  evolutionary  con- 
ceptions as  more  of  a  break  with  philo- 
sophical traditions  than  it  actually  was. 
He,  at  least,  was  extraordinarily  in- 
nocent regarding  every  sort  of  nexus 
between  his  own  philosophy  and  that 
of  any  remote  period  or  foreign  country. 
His  processes  were,  for  his  conscious- 
ness, his  own.  Honest  as  the  day  in 
acknowledging  every  indebtedness  that 
he  ever  observed,  he  never  learned  how 
to  regard  human  philosophical  thought 
itself  as  an  evolutionary  process  in 
which  his  own  thinking  had  an  organic 
place.  Hence,  as  soon  as  we  come  to 
consider  his  own  development,  we  have, 
like  himself,  to  break  for  the  time  with 
tradition,  and  to  consider  him  in  all  the 
very  striking  independence  of  his  char- 
acter, in  all  the  unconventionality  of 
his  training.  This  is  what  he  has  now 
enabled  us  to  do  by  means  of  his 
"  Autobiography." 

48 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

The  incidents  of  this  narrative  will 
attract,  no  doubt,  their  full  share  of 
attention,  and  will  soon  become  fa- 
miliar to  many  readers.  Our  concern 
is  here  more  with  the  general  type  of 
the  man,  and  with  the  way  in  which 
he  so  gradually  and  reasonably  grew  in- 
to his  subsequent  doctrine.  The  "  Auto- 
biography" shows  us  a  life  free  from 
most  of  the  great  crises  through  which 
men  of  ability  and  sensitiveness  are 
usually  found  to  have  passed.  No 
romance  made  his  youth  stormy;  no 
religious  period  had  to  be  lived  out; 
no  great  worldly  ambition  had  to 
be  disappointed.  Always  of  slender 
means,  he  was  never  abjectly  poor. 
Forced  to  earn  his  living,  he  was  never 
long  bound  to  any  uncongenial  work. 
Eccentric,  he  was  never  despised.  In- 
dependent, and  prone,  as  he  says,  to 
indiscreet  criticism  of  his  official  supe- 
riors, so  long  as  he  had  such,  he  still 
4  49 


HERBERT      SPENCER 


cherished  no  personal  grudges,  and 
had  little  or  no  consciousness  of  ever 
actually  quarrelling  with  anybody. 
Moreover,  he  deliberately  abandoned 
good  worldly  chances  which  men  who 
recognized  his  ability  were  glad  to 
offer  him.  Wholly  unwilling,  and  un- 
able, to  win  favor  by  flattery  or  by 
social  conformity,  he  made  apparently 
few  or  no  enemies,  and  cemented  a 
few  very  lasting  and  loyal  friendships, 
which,  for  him,  were  enough.  Critical 
of  all  men,  he  was  never  bitter,  except 
occasionally  in  controversy;  and  there 
his  obvious  love  of  truth  usually  made 
his  sharpness  of  speech  tolerable. 
Asking  for  no  sympathy,  he  in  the 
long  run  obtained  a  great  deal  of  sym- 
pathy from  those  who  valued  him. 
With  none  of  the  arts  of  the  party 
leader,  he  won,  in  time,  a  little  band  of 
disciples  whose   devotion  was,   as  we 

all  know,  wonderful,  and  whose  fidelity 
50 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

took,  upon  occasion,  very  definite 
material  forms.  A  confirmed  bachelor, 
he  was  not  only  fond  of  children,  but 
respected  their  independence,  and 
treated  them  so  as  to  show  his  respect. 
Devoid  of  romantic  sentiments,  he  was 
capable  of  a  very  noble  type  of  friend- 
ships with  congenial  women.  A  very 
elaborate,  and  in  his  own  way  a  very 
technical  thinker,  and  a  friend  of  a  few 
of  the  greatest  minds  of  his  time,  he 
also  remained  fond,  in  private  life,  of 
the  company  of  some  decidedly  thought- 
less people.  Reserving  his  best  for  a 
Huxley  or  a  Greorge  Eliot,  he  still  was 
a  good  companion  of  plain  folk.  A 
propagandist,  he  still  despised  every 
ordinary  device  for  winning  public 
favor.  Patient  in  his  toil  so  long  as  the 
public  neglected  him,  he  declined  all 
sorts  of  worldly  honor  when  they  came 
to  recognize  him.  In  brief,  his  per- 
sonal and  worldly  relationships  were  of 
51 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

a  very  high   order  of  moral   straight 
forwardness. 

The  great  misfortune  of  his  life  was 
his  nervous  invalidism.  This,  of  which 
he  had  in  early  manhood  some  warn- 
ings, became  decidedly  important  in 
1854,  at  the  age  of  thirty-four,  and 
thenceforth,  with  various  intermis- 
sions, and  with  periods  of  greatly 
increased  severity,  remained  his  com- 
panion to  the  end.  Its  origin  was,  as 
his  carefully  narrated  family  history 
shows,  partly  due  to  his  inherited 
nervous  constitution  —  a  sensitive  and 
irritable  one.  On  the  other  hand,  even 
without  any  disposition  to  lay  undue 
stress  upon  the  recently  over-empha- 
sized theory  which  regards  the  nervous 
troubles  of  a  vast  number  of  literary 
men  as  mainly  due  to  the  indirect  effect 
of  eye-strain,  no  reader  of  Spencer's 
account  who  is  accustomed  to  the  or- 
dinary complaints  of  nervous  students 
62 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

can  fail  to  suspect  that  some  sort  of 
eye-defect  played  probably,  almost 
unrecognized  by  Spencer,  a  very  con- 
siderable part  in  his  history  of  invalid- 
ism.^ In  his  earlier  descriptions  of  his 
symptoms,  the  association  of  his  "  head- 
sensations,"  and  of  his  subsequent  in- 
somnia, with  reading  "  even  for  a  few 
minutes,"  and  the  fact  that,  very  early 

^  The  theory  here  in  question  is  the  one  due  to  Di-. 
George  M.  Gould,  and  set  forth  in  his  "  Biographic 
Clinics"  (2  vols.,  Philadelphia,  1903,  1904).  Dr.  Gould 
actually  analyzes  the  cases  of  fourteen  men  and  women 
of  literary  note;  but  in  his  comments  he  clearly  shows 
that  he  regards  the  type  of  cases  in  question  as  repre- 
sented by  an  actually  "  vast  "  number  of  other  suiferers 
of  a  highly  intellectual  sort.  The  objection  suggested  in 
my  text  is  due,  not  to  any  disposition  on  my  part  to  judge 
for  myself  the  clinical  facts  of  the  oculist's  observation, 
but  to  a  confidence  that,  at  least  in  their  higher  psy- 
chological complications,  the  varied  troubles  of  highly 
nervous  subjects  of  intellectual  type,  although  no  doubt 
very  often  greatly  complicated  by  eye-strain,  can  seldom 
or  never  be  explained  as  mainly  due  to  any  one  irritating 
cause.  Their  deeper  cause  generally  seems  to  lie  in  the 
whole  inherited  constitution  of  the  sufferer.  Spencer's 
case,  in  this  respect,  is  less  complicated  than  are  those  of 
several  of  Dr.  Gould's  other  subjects. 

53 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

in  his  experience  of  defect,  he .  found 
that  he  could  often  dictate  without 
srreat  confusion  of  head  when  he  was 
unable  to  read  or  to  write, —  these  are 
phenomena  of  a  sort  which  we  now- 
adays regard  as  prima-facie  evidence 
that  a  man  had  better  consult  his  oc- 
ulist before  becoming  any  more  expert 
in  mysterious  head-symptoms.  Spen- 
cer himself,  however,  seems  to  have 
invented  explanations  of  his  troubles 
mainly  in  terms  of  the  peculiar  states 
which  he  attributed  to  his  cerebral 
circulation;  and  in  the  long  run  he 
plainly  decided  upon  his  devices  for 
self-treatment  and  regimen  with  char- 
acteristic indifference  to  the  advice  of 
anybody  else.  His  accounts  of  the 
later  phases  of  his  disorder,  in  his 
middle  life  and  old  age,  show  the  usual 
marks  of  the  man  expert  in  a  round  of 
symptoms,  and  in  a  hypochondriacal 
mode  of  attributing  to  them  more  sig- 
54 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

nificance  than  they  probably  have.  If 
Spencer  could  only  have  viewed  them 
in  another  light,  they  might  have 
proved  much  more  manageable.  In 
any  case,  this  nervous  history  is  inter- 
estingly free,  despite  the  long-continued 
periods  of  incapacity  which  it  often  in- 
cluded, from  the  so  frequent  tale  of 
deeper  emotional  and  intellectual  dis- 
turbance which  most  nervous  students 
have  to  tell.  Whatever  the  malady 
was,  it  left  Spencer's  essential  moral 
personality  remarkably  unscathed  and 
his  associative  processes  relatively  in- 
tact. It  gave  a  certain  dreary  formal- 
ity to  his  literary  style,  but  did  not 
injure  his  clearness  and  self-control  of 
expression.  It  gave  him  no  periods  of 
deeper  despair  of  which  he  thinks  it  at 
all  worth  while  to  tell.  In  the  beauti- 
fully frank  summary  and  estimate  of 
the  worth   of  his  life,  in  his  closing 

"Reflections,"   he  plainly  tries  to  say 
55 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

both  the  best  and  the  worst  that,  as  he 
thinks,  can  fah-ly  be  said,  from  a  per- 
sonal point  of  view,  regarding  the  value 
to  himself  of  the  life  which  he  had 
passed.  And  his  worst  is  indeed  not 
very  bad.  The  principal  moral  conse- 
quence of  his  malady  which  he  con- 
fesses was  a  frequently  uncontrollable 
but  very  simply  expressed  irritability ; 
so  that,  perhaps,  he  occasionally  swore 
at  a  mishap  in  fishing,  or  otherwise 
gave  way  to  some  outburst  which  his 
early  training  and  his  intellectual  habits 
alike  made,  in  his  own  eyes,  foolish. 
Such  reflexes  of  the  moment  were  asso- 
ciated with  a  certain  chronic  captious- 
ness  in  his  judgments  of  people,  art, 
etc.,  and  with  a  good  many  invalid 
eccentricities  of  conduct.  Amongst 
these  were  the  already  famous  ear-cov- 
erings whereby  he  used  to  escape  from 
wearing  conversations.  In  all  his  re- 
flections on  life  in  the  "Autobiography," 
56 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

Spencer  is  also  fond  of  emphasizing 
the  uncontrollable  character  of  the 
emotions,  in  a  way  that  partly  depends 
upon  his  experience  as  an  invalid. 
Nevertheless,  even  at  his  worst  he 
strikes  the  reader  as  a  man  of  uncom- 
mon freedom  from  uncontrollable  emo- 
tions of  a  deeper  sort;  and  one  who 
reads,  even  between  the  lines,  must  be 
convinced  that  Spencer  was  spared  a 
very  great  deal  of  what  the  nervous 
invalid  of  a  highly  intellectual  type 
generally  suffers.  In  his  worst  sea- 
sons Spencer  had  a  good  deal  of  aver- 
sion to  meeting  company,  and  found 
the  delivery  of  anything  like  a  public 
address  usually  intolerable  during  all 
his  later  years.  He  has  also  a  little  to 
say  about  certain  very  well-known  ex- 
periences of  "  double  consciousness  " ; 
but  fears,  pessimism,  an  altered  view 
of  life,  any  genuine  losing  of  touch 

with  himself,  any  deeper  loss  of  con- 
57 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

trol  over  his  associated  processes,  and 
many  other  of  the  usual  complaints  of 
the  nervous  student  —  these  are  all  nota- 
bly absent.  The  whole  story  suggests 
a  very  stubborn,  and  doubtless  in  part 
constitutional,  and  so  incurable,  defect, 
but  one  that,  after  all,  was  much  more 
superficial  in  its  significance  than  he 
himself  supposed.  Upon  his  work  it 
further  reacted  by  increasing  his  im- 
penetrable isolation  from  all  trains  and 
modes  of  thought  that  did  not  directly 
interest  him.  Since  he  could  read  so 
little,  why  try  to  understand  books  that 
could  not  instruct  him  I  Since  his 
nerve-centres  were  so  ill  supplied,  as 
he  assumed,  with  the  needed  blood, 
why  exhaust  them  by  opening  his  mind 
to  ideas  that  were  foreign  to  his  own  I 
His  "ear-stoppers"  thus  remain  typical 
of  his  persistent  closing  of  his  mind  to 
all  considerations  which  did  not  either 

support  his  predetermined  theories,  or 
68 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

else  help  him  occasionally  to  reassert 
himself  in  vigorous  polemic. 

Apart  from  his  invalidism,  Spencer 
(as  appears  from  his  letters  to  his 
father  and  to  his  friends,  and  in  his 
own  story)  early  showed  traits  which 
remain  throughout,  at  every  stage  of 
his  career,  very  unchanging.  Free 
from  all  the  ordinary  emotional  ex- 
cesses of  weaker  men,  free,  also,  from 
vehement  personal  affections,  yet  kindly 
disposed,  passively  benevolent,  and  in 
this  sense  humane,  he  was  most  of  all 
characterized  not  by  his  sentiments, 
but  by  his  ways  of  thinking  and  modes 
of  action.  An  unaggressive  but  un- 
conquerable stubbornness  of  opinion 
forbade  him  to  acquire  ideas  by  any 
method  but  his  own.  He  inquired 
keenly,  and  into  a  very  great  variety  of 
subjects.  Yet  what  is  usually  meant 
by  great  breadth  of  mind  is  not  to  be 

asserted  of  him.     For  he   could  adapt 
69 


HERBERT      SPENCER 


his  thoughts  to  no  mental  undertaking 
which  he  himself  had  not  first  prede- 
termined; and  his  understanding  of 
other  people's  intellectual  interests  was 
always  of  the  slightest  degree  that  was 
possible  in  so  well-informed  a  man.  In 
action  he  was  cool  and  deliberate ;  but 
any  plan  which  he  had  once  deter- 
mined upon  dominated  him  as  a  sort 
of  calm  and  passionless  obsession. 
Thus  when,  in  middle  life,  he  had 
once  resolved  to  see  the  eruption  of 
Vesuvius  without  the  aid  of  the  guides 
(whose  fees  offended  him),  the  dangers 
of  hot  lava  had  no  importance  for  him, 
until  he  had  passed  through  and  seen 
what  he  came  to  see.  In  youth,  there- 
fore, so  long  as  he  looked  to  other  men 
for  employment,  he  changed  his  em- 
ployers frequently,  and  seemed  a  "  roll- 
ing-stone." But  so  soon  as  he  made  up 
his  mind  to  produce  his  system,  noth- 
ing could  thenceforth  distract  him  from 
60 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

the  single  great  task.  In  his  engineer- 
ing years  he  was  mechanically  ingen- 
ious, and  he  records  a  considerable  list 
of  inventions.  He  solved  mathemati- 
cal problems,  and  discovered  a  geomet- 
rical theorem  of  some  importance,  but 
never  went  far  in  mathematics.  He 
made  natural  history  collections,  but 
never  became  a  naturalist.  He  per- 
formed physical  experiments,  but  was 
no  thorough-going  physicist.  He  paused 
at  the  edge  of  political  activities,  but 
avoided  public  life.  He  records  that 
he  never  puzzled  over  his  problems. 
His  intellectual  processes,  so  far  as  his 
invalidism  left  them  free,  were  auto- 
matic, pleasing,  untroubled.  At  last 
they  formed  themselves  into  a  system- 
atic plan.  The  synthetic  philosophy 
was  the  outcome  of  this  plan. 

Spencer  records  how   each    of    the 
leading  ideas  of  his  system  grew  up  in 

his  mind.     First  came  a  love  for  trac- 
61 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

ing  the  causes  of  things,  a  love  which 
early  led  him  to  the  notion  that  Na- 
ture permits  no  miracles,  that  all  proc- 
esses of  Nature  are  unbroken  and 
continuous,  and  that  all  which  is  beyond 
the  realm  of  discoverable  law  is  alto- 
gether unknowable.  Second  came  an 
assurance  that,  even  as  he  himself  was 
of  an  independent  spirit,  so  no  man's 
liberty  ought  to  be  hindered,  so  long 
as  such  a  man  did  not  interfere  with 
his  neighbor's  liberty.  Third  came, 
slowly  growing  in  his  mind,  the  as- 
surance that  the  "  development  theory  " 
must  account  for  living  things,  by 
means  of  a  natural  process,  just  as 
causation  in  general  was  needed  to  ac- 
count for  every  other  natural  event 
and  product.  Next  came  the  notion 
that,  in  particular,  the  life  of  the  mind 
must  be  understood  as  a  development, 
determined  by  natural  causes,  and  con- 
nected with  the  development  of  all  the 
62 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

phenomena  of  life.  Finally  came  the 
conviction  that  a  full  and  coherent 
theory  of  Nature,  in  which  the  organic 
and  inorganic  worlds  were  united  by  the 
working  of  universal  laws,  not  only 
would  explain,  so  far  as  that  was  pos- 
sible, the  growth  of  things,  but  also 
would  furnish  a  systematic  and  com- 
plete foundation  for  his  own  never 
changing  individualistic  ethics,  and  for 
his  sturdy,  old-fashioned  British  liberal- 
ism. In  this  way,  the  main  work  of 
Spencer's  life  came  to  be  an  effort  to 
bring  into  synthesis  an  organic  theory 
of  the  unity  of  the  evolutionary  process, 
with  a  doctrine  regarding  the  freedom 
and  the  rights  of  the  individual  which 
had  come  down  to  him  from  an  age 
when  evolution  and  the  organic  unity 
of  things  had  indeed  interested  Eng- 
lishmen  but  little.  This  particular 
synthesis  of  organic  evolution  with  in- 
dividual independence  remains  one  of 
63 


HERBERT     SPENCER 


the  most  paradoxical,  and  consequently 
most  instructive,  features  of  Spencer's 
teaching. 

To  go  more  into  detail,  this  evolution 
of  Spencer's  own  main  ideas,  as  he  care- 
fully narrates  the  process,  occurred 
somewhat  as  follows  :  In  childhood, 
the  idea  of  the  supernatural  was  rapidly 
sent  into  the  background  of  his  mind  by 
that  search  for  causes  which  his  father 
so  constantly  cultivated  in  him.  Before 
he  knew  why,  he  had  learned,  quite 
without  his  father's  intending  this  re- 
sult, to  disbelieve  in  miracles ;  and  so  in 
early  manhood,  "  the  current  creed  and 
its  associated  story  of  creation"  came, 
by  insensible  steps,  to  be  abandoned. 
In  consequence,  a  "  belief  in  evolution 
at  large  "  was  soon  "latent."  For,  as 
Spencer  says:  "The  doctrine  of  the 
universality  of  natural  causation  has 
for  its  inevitable  corollary  the  doctrine 
that  the  Universe  and  all  things  in  it 
64 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

have  reached  their  present  forms 
through  successive  stages  physically- 
necessitated."  This  "  latent "  assurance 
first  began  to  become  explicit  when, 
at  twenty  years  of  age,  Spencer  read 
LyelFs  ^'  Principles  of  Gleology."  One 
of  the  chapters  of  Lyell  was  devoted 
to  refuting  Lamarck's  theory  of  the 
origin  of  species;  and  this  chapter, 
as  Spencer  tells  us,  "  had  the  effect  of 
giving  me  a  decided  leaning  to"  just 
such  views.  That  is,  as  he  tells  us, 
Lyell's  chapter  brought  to  his  conscious- 
ness, by  contrast,  what  his  own  belief 
in  the  uniformity  of  Nature  really  im- 
plied as  to  the  origin  of  organic  forms. 
Two  years  later,  in  1842,  when 
Spencer's  political  and  ethical  interests 
had  led  him  to  attempt  a  defence  of 
the  "  tendency  to  carry  individual  free- 
dom as  far  as  possible,"  and  when  he 
consequently  wrote  a  series  of  letters 

to  the  "  Nonconformist  "  newspaper  on 
5  65 


HERBERT     SPENCER 


"  The  Proper  Sphere  of  Government," 
there  was  shown,  in  these  letters,  as  he 
tells  us,  "  an  unhesitating  belief  that 
the  phenomena  of  both  individual 
life  and  social  life  conform  to  law." 
There  was  also  expressed  the  view  that 
the  functions,  the  instincts,  and  the 
organs  of  any  creature,  whether  animal, 
plant,  or  man,  are  "dependent  upon 
the  position  in  which  the  creature  is 
placed."  "Surround  it,"  continues 
Spencer  in  one  of  these  letters,  speak- 
ing of  any  such  creature,  "  with  circum- 
stances which  preclude  the  necessity 
for  any  one  of  its  faculties,  and  that 
faculty  will  become  gradually  impaired. 
.  .  .  Place  a  tribe  of  animals  in  a 
situation  where  one  of  their  attributes 
is  unnecessary  —  take  away  its  natural 
exercise,  —  diminish  its  activity,  and 
you  will  gradually  destroy  its  power. 
Successive  generations  will  see  the 
faculty,  or  instinct,  or  whatever  it 
66 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

may  be,  become  gradually  weaker,  and 
an  ultimate  degeneracy  of  the  race 
will  inevitably  ensue.  All  this  is  true 
of  Man."  This,  then,  was  his  early 
way  of  expressing  himself.  Spencer, 
at  this  time,  accordingly  read  the  les- 
son of  such  tendencies  in  the  form  of 
the  assertion,  explicitly  made  in  these 
letters,  that  man's  proper  adaptation 
to  his  social  functions  will  best  occur 
if  his  relations  to  society  are  not  arti- 
ficially interfered  with,  and  if  he  is 
not  protected  by  the  state  from  the 
necessity  of  exercising  his  individual 
powers,  and  of  finding  his  own  rela- 
tively "  stable  equilibrium  "  with  his 
social  world.  Here,  as  Spencer  points 
out,  are  already  the  germs  of  the  whole 
later  theory.  A  natural  process  of 
adaptation  gradually  determines  the 
functions,  and,  in  some  greater  or  less 
measure,  the  structures,  of  living  beings. 

This  process  is  an  instance  of  some  all- 

67 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

pervasive  system  of  physical  law.  It 
leads,  if  undisturbed,  to  certain  condi- 
tions of  stable  equilibrium  which  in 
themselves  tend  to  be  good  for  the 
creature  directly  concerned.  The  social 
lesson  is  that  the  state  ought  not  to  in- 
terfere with  this  natural  process  of  the 
evolution  of  the  social  individual. 

In  rewriting  the  discussions  thus 
begun  for  his  "Social  Statics,"  in  1850, 
Spencer  recognized  that  alike  in  living 
organisms  and  in  societies  "  progress  " 
is  from  conditions  wherein  "  like  parts  " 
perform  "  like  functions,"  to  conditions 
wherein  "unlike  parts"  perform  "un- 
like functions,"  —  in  brief,  that  "  in 
these  cases  progress  is  from  the  uniform 
to  the  multiform. ' '  In  the  immediately 
subsequent  years,  the  Milne-Edwards 
conception  of  "  the  physiological  divi- 
sion of  labor,"  and  Von  Baer's  formula 
that  the  development  of  an  organism  is 
a  change  from  "  homogeneity  of  struc- 
68 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

ture  to  heterogeneity  of  structure," 
were  both  added  to  Spencer's  range  of 
evolutionary  conceptions.  The  ideas 
thus  acquired  were  quickly  general- 
ized so  as  to  receive  application  to  the 
philosophy  of  literary  style,  to  psy- 
chological phenomena  generally,  and 
to  the  evolution  of  social  institutions. 
As  Spencer  proceeded,  in  1854-1855, 
to  the  completion  of  the  first  edition 
of  his  "  Psychology,"  he  was  "  suddenly 
led  to  the  perception ' '  that  the  ad- 
vance "from  the  homogeneous  to  the 
heterogenous  is  a  universal  trait  of 
progress,  inorganic,  organic,  and  super- 
organic."  The  "  multiplication  of 
effects,"  and  "the  instability  of  the 
homogeneous  ' '  were,  by  1857,  both  of 
them  in  his  mind  as  the  "causes"  of 
this  "universal  transformation."  In 
1858  he  definitely  opposed  to  the  "  proc- 
ess of  evolution"  that  of  "dissolu- 
tion," and  regarded  the  rhythm  of  these 
69 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

processes   as   a    mechanical    necessity 

to  which  all  teleological  interpretations 

of    evolution    must    be    subordinated. 

The  conceptions  of  the  transition  from 

"the  definite  to  the  indefinite,"   and 

of  the  part  which  "  integration  "  plays 

in  evolution,  gradually  became  clear  to 

Spencer,   partly  during  the  course  of 

the  development  of  the  "  Psychology," 

partly    after    the    issue    of    the    first 

edition  of  the  ''  First  Principles."    The 

"  System  of  Synthetic  Philosophy"  was 

begun  in  1860.     The  new  conceptions 

which  Darwin's  "  Origin  of  Species " 

furnished,  in  the  course   of  the  same 

year,  were  very  generously  welcomed 

and   considered,  but  were  rather   too 

easily  assimilated    by  Spencer  to  his 

own  generalizations.    And  in  1864,  at 

length,    the    final    great    step    in  the 

organization  of  Spencer's  evolutionary 

theory    was    taken    when    he    found 

"  suddenly  disclosed  "  "  the  truth  that 
70 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

integration  is  a  primary  process  and 
differentiation  a  secondary  process; 
and  that  thus,  while  the  formation  of 
a  coherent  aggregate  is  the  universal 
trait  of  Evolution,  the  increase  of 
heterogeneity,  necessarily  subsequent, 
is  but  an  almost  universal  trait;  the 
one  being  unconditional  and  the  other 
conditional."  What  was  still  further 
added,  in  1867,  related  rather  to  a 
matter  of  detail. 

One  who  reviews  this  process  in  its 
relation  to  the  general  history  of  the 
conception  of  evolution  in  recent  times 
is  afresh  impressed  with  the  often  ob- 
served fact  that  the  centre  of  Spencer's 
philosophical  interests  always  remained 
somewhat  remote  from  the  matters 
which  mainly  engaged  either  the  popu- 
lar or  the  scientific  attention  during  the 
years  when  the  evolutionary  contro- 
versy was  warmest.  The  popular 
readers  of  Darwin  and  of  other  evolu- 
71 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

tionists  were  usually  most  concerned 
with  the  questions:  "Has  there  been 
any  transformation  of  species  at  all  I  " 
"  Is  man  descended  from  the  lower 
animals  I  "  "Is  the  human  mind,  or, 
again,  conscience,  or  is  religion,  a 
piu'ely  natural  product  of  evolution  I  " 
The  scientific  men  who  took  part  in 
the  Darwinian  controversy  were  also 
often  interested  in  more  broadly  specu- 
lative questions.  But  their  own  tech- 
nical tasks  led  them  to  lay  more 
emphasis,  during  the  years  since  1860, 
upon  such  questions  as:  "Has  Dar- 
win's (or  any  other)  theory  brought 
the  origin  or  the  transformation  of 
species  definitely  within  the  range  of 
legitimate  scientific  inquiry?"  "Is 
Darwin's  account,  or  (in  later  stages 
of  the  discussion)  is  some  rival  account 
of  the  factors  to  which  the  origin  of 
species  is  due,  probably  a  correct  or 
an  adequate  one  ? "  "Do  the  new 
72 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

theories  aid  tis  in  formulating  definite 
hypotheses  that  help  us  in  other 
branches  of  special  inquiry  than  those 
to  which  they  have  so  far  been  applied!" 
"  What  do  we  know  about  the  ancestry 
of  man  % ' ' 

Now,  Spencer's  philosophical  inter- 
ests had,  as  their  main  object,  decidedly 
different  topics  from  any  of  these.  The 
just  mentioned  questions  of  the  more 
popular  type  never  gave  him  serious 
concern  after  once  his  early  years  were 
passed.  For  that  some  natural  process 
was  responsible  for  the  gradual  develop- 
ment of  living  beings,  and  so  of  man, 
and  of  all  mental  and  social  phenomena, 
had  appeared  sure  to  him,  as  an  inevit- 
able result  of  the  general  belief  in 
causation,  already  during  the  40's. 
It  appeared  sure  to  him  for  the  same 
reasons  that  made  some  sort  of  evolu- 
tion acceptable  to  the  first  philosophers 

of  Grreece.     It  was  so  far,  for  him,  no 
73 


HERBERT      SPENCER 


result  of  scientific  induction.  It  was 
simply  a  consequence  of  his  now  settled 
habit  of  believing  in  the  existence  of  a 
natural  cause  for  everything.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  more  special  Darwinian 
and  anti-Darwinian  arguments  regard- 
ing the  factors  of  organic  evolution, 
much  as  they  later  interested  him, 
never  reached  the  first  grade  of  im- 
portance in  his  mind.  He  contributed 
to  such  discussions,  late  in  his  career, 
some  of  the  best  of  his  shorter  essays. 
But  as  a  philosopher  he  was  only  by 
the  way  concerned  with  such  things. 
He  was  rather  busy,  in  the  main,  with 
the  finding  of  a  formula  general  enough 
to  cover  the  whole  range  of  evolution- 
ary phenomena,  and  with  proving  that 
this  formula  correctly  described  the 
"  cause "  of  evolution,  so  far  as  that 
cause  is  knowable  at  all.  This  "  cause  " 
is  something  much  more  general  than 

is  any  one  of  the  hypothetical  special 
74 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

"  factors  of  evolution."  As  a  philoso- 
pher, Spencer  is  therefore  most  of  all 
responsible  for  this  general  formula 
and  for  undertaking  to  show  that  it 
applied  to  all  sorts  of  evolutionary 
processes. 


75 


Ill 


/k  ND  so  we  come,  at  length,  in  our 
/-\  account  of  Spencer,  to  an  at- 
tempt at  a  restatement  of  the 
sense  of  Spencer's  formula.  Spencer's 
own  peculiar  vocabulary  is  as  chronic 
an  incident  of  his  books  as  his  head- 
symptoms  were  chronic  incidents  of 
his  life.  Let  us  try,  for  the  moment, 
to  use  as  far  as  we  can  our  own  words, 
while  still  stating,  as  faithfully  as  we 
may,  his  case.  Our  words  may  be  not 
as  good  as  his;  but  change  is  often 
restful. 

In  the  world  at  large,  matter  and 
energy  (so  Spencer  points  out)  are  con- 
stantly passing  from  one  configuration 
or  arrangement  to  another.     As  this 

ceaselessly  takes  place,  particular  things 
76 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

—  suns,  systems,  planets,  continents, 
forests,  plants,  animals,  men,  societies, 
mental  states  —  appear  and  pass  away. 
If  now  we  try  to  look  over  the  whole 
range  of  the  vast  process  thus  presented 
to  us,  we  observe  that  what  happens 
can  be  reduced,  in  its  larger  outlines, 
to  two  opposed  special  processes,  which 
more  or  less  rhythmically  take  each 
other's  place  in  any  given  part  of  the 
world,  according  to  the  prevalent  con- 
ditions that  the  relations  of  this  part 
of  the  world  to  the  rest  determine. 
One  of  these  processes  occurs  when 
bodies  collect  more  closely  together, 
cool,  condense,  contract,  solidify,  stif- 
fen, harden,  while  the  energy  that  they 
formerly  contained  is,  in  part  (often 
in  very  great  part),  lost,  being  spread 
out  as  radiant  energy  over  vast  spaces, 
or  conducted  away  to  other  bodies. 
Wherever  such  processes  of  "  integra- 
tion" predominate,  there  occurs  what 
77 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

we  shall  call  evolution.  The  other  proc- 
ess occurs  when  bodies  get  expanded, 
liquefied,  vaporized,  evaporated,  scat- 
tered, sundered,  widely  distributed. 
This  process,  wherever  it  predominates, 
constitutes  the  primary  feature  of  what 
we  call  dissolution.  It  can  occur  only 
when  into  a  system  of  bodies  energy 
is  introduced  (by  radiation  or  other- 
wise) from  other  systems,  or  when 
collisions,  or  similar  events,  lead  to 
distributions  of  energy  which  involve 
local  heating,  expansion,  and  the  like. 
Our  main  attention  is  to  be  devoted  to 
the  one  of  these  processes,  which  is 
called  evolution. 

The  gathering  together,  the  conden- 
sation, the  contraction,  and  the  harden- 
ing of  masses  of  matter  may  go  on 
uncomplicated  by  other  processes.  So 
it  is,  for  instance,  when  vapor  con- 
denses and  falls  in  drops  on  a  rainy 
day,  or  when  an  asteroid  is  formed  (if 
78 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

one  is  so  formed)  by  the  condensation 
of  a  mass  of  cooling  material  of  nebu- 
lar origin.  But  sometimes,  while  this 
uncomplicated  or  "  primary "  process 
of  evolution  is  going  on,  there  also 
occur  '■ '  secondary ' '  processes,  due  to 
the  fact  that  one  part  of  the  mass, 
which  as  a  whole  grows  denser,  is  not 
placed  or  influenced  in  the  same  way 
in  which  another  part  is  placed  or  in- 
fluenced. Thus,  the  outside  of  a  cool- 
ing mass  may  have  a  crust  form  upon 
it,  while  the  inside  is  still  liquid ;  the 
crystals  which  form  as  an  oversaturated 
solution  cools  may  gather  at  the  bot- 
tom of  a  vessel,  while  the  top  remains 
clear  liquid;  and  so  on  indefinitely. 
It  is  these  "secondary"  changes  which 
are  responsible  for  what  we  usually 
regard  as  the  most  important  phe- 
nomena of  evolution.  That  the  second- 
ary changes  can  become  so  important 

as  they  do  become  is  due  to  the  fact 
79 


HERBERT     SPENCER 


that,  as  masses  of  matter  condense,  they 
often  form  clumps  which  are  in  an  in- 
termediate state  between  the  stage  of 
absolute  hardness  or  solidity  on  the 
one  hand,  and  the  state  of  an  abso- 
lutely free  internal  mobility  of  the 
parts  of  the  mass  on  the  other  hand. 
A  somewhat  viscous  body  is  more  or 
less  plastic  to  changes  which  are  im- 
pressed upon  it.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  is  able  to  retain  for  some  time 
the  traces  of  such  changes.  Examples 
of  "  plastic  bodies  "  of  this  general  type 
are  numerous.  Our  planet  itself,  as  a 
whole,  is  such  a  "  plastic  body."  Its 
crust  is  neither  unchangeably  hard  and 
soldified,  nor  yet  so  soft  that  the  traces 
of  what  has  happened  to  or  in  this 
crust  easily  pass  away.  The  human 
brain,  "  wax  to  receive,  and  marble  to 
retain,"  is  a  peculiarly  complex  instance 
of  a  plastic  body.    Whatever  happens 

to  its  sense-organs  may  impress  it,  and 
80 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

normally  does  so  —  so  delicately  yield- 
ing are  its  minutest  structures.  Yet  it 
is  as  retentive  as  it  is  impressible.  A 
body  can  possess  some  degree  of  this 
plasticity  only  when  it  is  not  too  dense 
and  stiff  in  structure,  and  when  it  con- 
sequently contains  a  good  deal  of  molec- 
ular energy;  while,  at  the  same  time, 
it  must  be  stiff  enough  to  resist  strain 
to  such  an  extent  as  is  needed  to  enable 
it  to  keep  the  traces  of  what  happens 
to  it. 

Now,  especially  in  the  case  of  the 
plastic  bodies,  the  "  secondary  " 
changes  aforesaid  (changes  which  go 
on,  indeed,  chiefly  when  condensation 
predominates  in  the  region  of  the  world 
which  is  in  question,  although  these 
changes  are  not  mere  cases  of  con- 
densation) follow  a  law  of  the  follow- 
ing type. 

(1)  If  the  parts  of  any  large  body  are 

at  any  moment  as  nearly  alike^  in  some 
6  81 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

specific  respect,  as  theij  then  can  de  (e.g., 
if  they  are,  through  the  action  of  some 
cause,  raade  for  a  moment  as  nearly  as 
possible  of  the  same  temperature),  then, 
unless  the  causes  which  especially 
determined  the  occurrence  of  just  this 
state  persist,  it  is  certain  that  this 
relative  "  homogeneity  "  will  prove  "  un- 
stable." That  is,  a  large  body,  if  it  be 
for  a  time  of  the  same  temperature 
through  and  through,  will  cool  un- 
equally in  its  different  parts;  for  the 
different  parts  will  be  differently  ex- 
posed to  the  surrounding  world.  In 
consequence  it  will  be  a  general  rule 
of  an  evolutionary  process  that  the 
energy  which  is  passing  out  of  the 
various  parts  of  a  system  will  pass  at 
various  rates,  while  the  condensation 
will  proceed  also  at  various  rates  in 
the  different  parts  concerned,  so  that 
there  will  be  a  constant  tendency  of 
the  evolving  mass  to  develop  within 
82 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

itself  more  and  more  differences.  If 
the  mass  in  question  were  a  gas  or  a 
liquid,  the  results  of  this  inner  differ- 
entiation would  be  lost  as  fast  as  they 
appeared,  since  nothing  would  there 
be  abiding.  But  if  the  body  in  question, 
or  the  mass  of  bodies,  is  in  a  plastic 
condition,  the  results  of  many  or  all 
of  these  successive  differentiations  will 
be  retained  in  such  forms  as  perma- 
nent shells,  rinds,  and  crusts;  or  as 
wrinkles,  furrows,  variations  of  inter- 
nal consistency  of  structure ;  or  as  spe- 
cially differentiated  types  of  movement ; 
or  as  habits  of  a  brain,  as  customs  of  a 
society ;  and  so  on  endlessly. 

(2)  Meanwhile,  in  its  relations  to 
the  surrounding  world,  the  differen- 
tiating and  plastic  mass,  as  it  thus 
ages,  will  react  by  its  various  structure 
and  consistency  upon  the  play  of  the 
external  forces  which  impinge  upon  it. 

As  the  sand  bank,  once  formed,  deflects 
83 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

the  very  stream  that  deposited  it,  so 
the  differentiating  plastic  body,  as  its 
parts  grow  more  various,  will  in  its 
turn  render  more  various  the  new 
influences  to  which  it  is  subject.  The 
resulting  "multiplication  of  effects" 
will  be  cumulative,  and  will  tend  more 
and  more  to  the  differentiation  of  the 
plastic  body.  And  so  one  explains 
how  a  planet,  first  liquid,  and  of  nearly 
equal  heat  throughout,  gradually  com- 
plicates its  structure  as  it  cools.  Each 
new  differentiation  of  its  crust  is  re- 
tained by  this  plastic  body  as  it  slowly 
grows  more  solid;  and  these  traces  of 
past  differentiation  react  upon  the  in- 
fluences of  air,  sunlight,  ocean,  until 
the  climates  of  deserts  and  mountain 
ranges,  of  seashores  and  of  the  interiors 
of  continents,  become  more  and  more 
various.  Equally  one  explains,  in 
Spencer's  opinion,  why  an  organism,  a 
human  brain,  or  a  social  order  shows, 
84 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

up  to  its  limits,  a  constant  increase  of 
variety  in  its  structure  and  in  its 
functions. 

(3)  But  progressive  differentiation  is 
not  all  that  results  in  the  course  of 
this  secondary  evolution.  The  ener- 
gies within  and  about  a  plastic  body, 
as  it  slowly  integrates,  tend  not 
merely  to  the  formation  of  a  confused 
variety,  but  to  the  evolution  of  order 
amidst  the  confusion.  For,  as  Spen- 
cer insists,  there  are  forms  of  energy 
which  act  like  a  stream  of  water,  or 
like  a  current  of  air,  or  like  a  common 
and  pervasive  social  tendency.  These 
forms  of  energy  are  to  be  considered 
as  groups  of  "  like  forces."  They 
will  always  be  present  when  a  plastic 
body  is  subject  to  secondary  evolution; 
since  all  the  forms  of  fluid  action, 
some  of  the  forms  of  radiant  energy,  the 
gravitation   due   to   the    neighborhood 

of  large  masses,  etc.,  are  found  wher- 

85 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

ever  bodies  are  undergoing  differen- 
tiation. Now  these  more  massive  forms 
of  energy  will  move  or  will  transform 
"like"  objects  "in  like  ways"  and 
"unlike"  objects  "in  unlike  ways." 
The  results  will  be  the  sort  of  "  seg- 
regation "  (i.e.,  of  sorting)  which  one 
sees  when  light  dust  is  separated 
from  heavy  dust  by  the  wind,  or 
when  light  sediment  is  separated  from 
heavy  sediment  by  the  action  of  streams 
and  of  gravity,  or  when  the  approach 
of  a  magnet  segregates  iron  particles 
from  a  confused  aggregate,  or  when 
men  of  a  roving  disposition  are  segre- 
gated from  home-staying  folk  by  the 
exciting  attraction  of  some  newly  dis- 
covered country  or  gold  mine ;  or  when 
the  soldiers  go  together  to  the  war, 
leaving  wives  and  children  at  home. 
To  this  general  factor,  endlessly  compli- 
cated in  its  working  by  the  conditions 

of  organic  or  of  social  structure,  Spen- 
86 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

cer  attributes  the  fact  that  the  plastic 
bodies  (subject  as  they  are  not  only  to 
forces  which  diversify  their  parts  and 
activities,  but  also  to  forces  which  tend 
to  group  like  objects  and  parts  to- 
gether, and  to  sunder  unlike  objects 
and  parts)  tend  in  the  long  run  to 
attain  what  he  calls  a  "definite" 
structure  and  arrangement.  A  "  defi- 
nite ' '  structure  is  one  wherein  the  out- 
lines are  clear,  the  parts  divided  by 
sharp  boundaries  from  one  another, 
and  the  whole  not  only  differentiated, 
but  arranged  in  orderly  fashion.  This 
"  segregation  "  process  may  be  viewed 
as  a  special  union  of  the  general 
process  of  condensation  or  of  "  inte- 
gration "  upon  which  the  "  primary 
evolution"  depends,  with  the  process 
of  differentiation  itself. 

(4)  As  a  consequence  of  the  processes 
thus  described,  evolution,  in  the  cases 

where  it  is  both  primary  and  second- 

87 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

ary,  has  a  character  which  may  be 
summed  up  as  follows:  Evolution  is 
the  consolidation  of  a  mass  of  matter, 
attended  by  a  loss  of  some  of  the 
energy  that  this  mass  contained ;  while, 
as  this  consolidation  takes  place,  both 
the  matter  concerned  and  the  energy 
which  it  still  retains  pass  from  a  state 
in  which  there  is  little  firmness  of 
structure,  little  orderliness  of  ar- 
rangement, little  sharpness  of  contour, 
and  much  inner  resemblance  of  part  and 
part,  to  a  state  in  which  there  is  great 
firmness  of  structure,  much  orderliness 
of  arrangement,  much  sharpness  of 
contour,  and  much  inner  variety  and 
difference  of  part  and  part.  This 
whole  process,  as  Spencer  insists,  is 
due  to  the  fact  that,  as  the  mass  con- 
cerned loses  some  of  its  energy,  the 
different  regions  of  the  consolidating 
aggregate,  being  differently  affected  by 
the  surroundings,  tend  to  grow  more 
88 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

and  more  unlike,  while  the  more  per- 
manent forces  that  play  upon  the  whole 
tend  to  sort  out  the  parts  of  the  whole, 
and  to  dispose  them  in  more  or  less 
sharply  sundered  layers  or  sections ;  and 
while,  too,  in  case  the  mass  in  question 
is  a  sufficiently  plastic  body,  it  not  only 
undergoes  these  changes,  but  as  it  ages 
preserves  the  traces  of  former  changes, 
so  that  the  latter  become  the  founda 
tion  of  a  cumulative  increase  of  former 
tendencies. 

The  evolutionary  process  thus  defined 
must  have  its  limits  in  case  of  each 
limited  mass  of  matter.  When  these 
limits  are  once  reached,  the  no  longer 
plastic  body  will  be  in  such  equilibrium 
with  its  surroundings  as  to  resist,  by 
its  inner  consistency  of  structure  and 
of  movement,  such  changes  as  these 
surroundings  are  able  to  bring  to  pass 
in  it.  This  state  of  equilibrium,  how- 
ever, will  not  be  everlasting.  The  once 
89 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

plastic  body,  now  incapable  of  further 
organization,  will  finally  meet  con- 
ditions to  which  its  structure  is  not 
adapted.  Forces,  such  as  attrition, 
collision,  and  the  like,  will  play  upon 
it  and  destroy  it.  Dissolution  will 
succeed  evolution. 


90 


IV 


SUCH  is,  in  outline,  Spencer's  gen- 
eral view  concerning  the  charac- 
ter and  causes  of  evolution,  and 
concerning  the  place  of  evolution  in 
Nature.  A  doctrine  of  such  generality 
and  inclusiveness  could  not  be  stated 
without  requiring  from  its  author  an 
exposition  of  many  other  fundamen- 
tally important  theses.  The  theory  ap- 
peared upon  its  face  to  supplant  any 
theological  account  of  the  origin  of 
natural  phenomena.  Hence  it  was 
necessary  to  make  explicit  the  author's 
attitude  towards  religious  problems. 
This  undertaking,  in  its  turn,  demanded 
the  statement  of  a  theory  of  knowledge. 

The  result  of  these  requirements  was 
91 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

the  section  of  Spencer's  "First  Prin- 
ciples" which  dealt  with  "The  Un- 
knowable." On  the  other  hand,  if  the 
general  doctrine  was  to  be  applied  to 
psychological  phenomena,  a  theory  of 
the  relations  between  mental  and  ma- 
terial processes  was  required,  so  far  as 
these  relations,  in  Spencer's  opinion, 
belonged  to  the  realm  of  the  "  know- 
able."  Furthermore,  a  summary  ac- 
count of  the  type  of  mental  evolution 
was  needed  in  order  to  enable  one  to 
compare  this  type  with  that  which  the 
general  formula  described.  This  need 
was  met  by  Spencer's  interpretation 
of  mental  life  as  an  "  adjustment  of 
internal  to  external  relations,"  —  an  in- 
terpretation which,  abstract  as  its  for- 
mulation was,  has  proved  of  no  small 
service  in  directing  the  course  of  sub- 
sequent psychological  inquiry.  When, 
in  addition,  the  general  formula  of  evo- 
lution was  to  be  applied  in  the  socio- 
92 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

logical  field,  more  special  theories  of 
the  various  types  of  social  phenomena 
were  needed.  And  here  Spencer's 
doctrines  as  to  the  origin  and  evolu- 
tion of  religion,  and  his  analyses  of  the 
militant  and  industrial  types  of  social 
evolution,  were  the  results  of  efforts  to 
meet  this  requirement.  Finally,  the 
formula  had  to  be  applied  in  the  region 
to  which  it  appeared  the  least  adapted, 
namely,  in  the  region  of  ethics.  While 
Spencer,  conceiving  ethical  activities  in 
terms  of  the  tendency  towards  individ- 
ual and  social  "  equilibrium,"  was  able 
to  bring  to  pass  various  connections 
between  the  type  of  change  which  he 
attributed  to  a  plastic  body  undergoing 
secondary  evolution  and  the  type  of 
change  which  is  to  be  observed  in  char- 
acter and  in  conduct  as  men's  lives 
harmonize  and  consolidate,  his  ethical 
theory  is  much  more  the  comment  of 

an  old-fashioned  English  Liberal  upon 
93 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

modern  social  conditions  than  it  is  a 
new  result  which  evolutionary  science 
contributes  to  human  knowledge.  Yet, 
in  all  these  regions  of  inquiry,  Spencer 
was  led  to  special  theses  which  stand 
side  by  side  with  his  statement  of  the 
formula  of  evolution,  and  so  constitute 
parts  of  his  contribution  to  philosophy. 
Most  of  all,  however,  he  himself  felt 
that  the  formula  of  evolution  was  his 
most  important  contribution  to  the 
"unification  of  science." 

When  we  attempt  to  estimate  the 
value  of  the  system  of  ideas  which  we 
have  thus  sketched,  it  is  well  at  once 
to  lay  aside  certain  controversial  tests 
by  which  Spencer's  opponents  have  al- 
together too  often  sought  to  try  him. 
In  the  end,  a  system  of  this  sort  must 
be  judged  in  the  light  of  what  it  tries 
to  accomplish,  and  not  in  the  light  of 
considerations  which  are  foreign  to 
it.  Thus,  for  instance,  as  myself  an 
94 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

idealist,  I  find  myself  profoundly  at 
variance  with  Spencer's  theory  of 
knowledge,  and  with  his  doctrine  of 
the  Unknowable.  Yet,  viewing  the 
man  historically,  I  have  to  see  that  his 
concern  with  the  problem  of  knowl- 
edge was,  comparatively  speaking,  of 
incidental  importance  to  him ;  that  he 
never  attacked  the  problem  with  any 
very  serious  and  reflective  interest  in 
finding  where  the  problem  lay;  and 
that  his  elaborately  stated  analyses  of 
"The  Universal  Postulate,"  of  the 
"  Theories  of  the  Metaphysicians,"  and 
of  the  "  Relativity  of  Knowledge  "  had 
their  place  in  his  exposition  merely  as 
conscientious  but  uninstructed  prelim- 
inary efforts  to  clear  the  way  for  quite 
other  considerations,  in  which  he  teas 
positively  interested.  Otherwise,  these 
discussions  of  knowledge  and  being  ex- 
pressed his  classic  limitation  to  certain 

very    simple    intuitions,  —  the   whole- 
95 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

some,  straightforward  intuitions  of  an 
English  Radical,  who,  having  early 
seen  that  we  can  know  about  natural 
causation,  but  cannot  know  anything 
about  theology,  and  that  we  can  know 
our  rights  and  our  duties,  but  cannot 
make  out  what  it  is  that  interests  some 
people  in  Plato,  in  Kant,  and  in  all 
such  speculators,  —  henceforth  reflects 
upon  ultimate  problems  only  for  the 
sake  of  bringing  to  sharp  expression 
the  beliefs  that  he  never  learned  to 
question  or  to  analyze. 

On  this  side,  then,  Spencer's  limita- 
tions are  as  obvious  as  it  is  unfair  to 
make  one's  judgment  of  him  depend- 
ent upon  them.  What  he  undertook 
to  do  was  to  reduce  to  unity  certain 
aspects  of  the  world  of  empirical  facts. 
That  his  effort  to  do  this  turned  upon 
fundamental  ideas  which  he  was  never 
able   critically  to  scrutinize  is  of  less 

importance  in  estimating  the  value  of 
96 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

his  principal  formula.  The  real  ques- 
tion in  case  of  Spencer  is,  How  far 
did  he  help  people  to  understand 
evolution  ? 

In  trying  to  answer  this  question  we 
must  again  beware  of  making  our  judg- 
ment turn  mainly  upon  his  tendency 
to  apply  formulas  derived  from  mate- 
rial phenomena  to  the  description  of 
mental  and  moral  processes.  What- 
ever our  view  of  the  nature  of  things, 
we  all  must  admit  that,  since  human 
mental  processes  are  associated  with 
the  functions  of  material  organisms,  it 
is  useful,  for  certain  purposes,  to  ap- 
proach the  natural  history  of  mind 
from  the  physical  side,  and  to  describe 
psychological  processes,  so  far  as  that 
is  possible,  in  terms  of  their  neutral 
and  motor  expressions  and  accompani- 
ments. Hence,  if  anything  general  can 
be  said  about  the  evolution  of  my  body, 

that  will  give  me   some   propositions 
•     7  97 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

that  I  must  use  in  describing  the  evo- 
lution of  my  mind.  A  true  idealist 
fears  least  of  all  such  use  of  physical 
formulations  as  an  aid  in  psychology. 
For  he  knows  that  when  you  are  study- 
ing phenomena,  the  best  way  to  vindi- 
cate the  sovereignty  of  reason  in  the 
world  is  to  try  to  describe,  in  the  most 
exact  and  orderly  way  that  you  can, 
the  lawful  connections  between  mental 
and  material  phenomena.  The  closer 
and  the  more  exact  you  show  such  con- 
nections to  be,  the  nearer  you  come  to 
illustrating  the  reasonableness  of  things 
in  the  order  of  Nature.  Moreover, 
since  physical  phenomena  are  more 
describable  than  are  mental  phenomena, 
natural  science  approaches  the  latter 
through  the  former.  Hence  whoever 
regards  the  evolution  of  mind  as  an 
incident  of  some  physical  process  of 
consolidation  or  of  mechanical  differ- 
entiation offers  us,  of  course,  no  ulti- 
98 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

mate  truth  about  the  inmost  nature  of 
being;  but  he  also  asserts  something 
which  no  idealist,  who  recognizes  what 
the  business  of  human  science  is,  should 
regard  as  in  the  least  inconsistent  with 
a  spiritual  interpretation  of  reality. 
For,  if  such  a  formula  is  true  of  the 
phenomena  of  matter  and  mind,  it  will 
remain  true  precisely  of  —  phenomena. 
Now,  Spencer's  formula  was  intended 
to  hold  true  of  phenomena  only.  Fur- 
thermore, that  Spencer's  business,  as 
a  student  of  phenomena,  was  with 
"mechanism,"  in  the  general  sense, 
rather  than  with  "  teleology,"  I  also 
fully  believe.  He  ought  not,  therefore, 
to  be  condemned  merely  because  he 
undertook  to  conceive  evolution  in  me- 
chanical terms.  He  would  have  been 
false  to  his  just  philosophical  purpose 
if  he  had  conceived  of  it  otherwise. 

The  fair  question  in  regard  to  Spen- 
cer is,  then,  this:   "  Is  his  '  unification ' 
99 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

of  the  purely  phenomenal  processes 
of  evolution  a  generalization  at  once 
sound  and  enlightening?  "  This  is  the 
question  upon  whose  true  answer  his 
main  value  for  philosophy  depends. 

The  answer  to  the  question  is  not 
simple.  In  favor  of  Spencer's  formula, 
as  he  states  it,  stands  the  unquestion- 
able fact  that  the  transformations  of 
energy,  in  the  physical  world,  are  all  of 
them,  so  far  as  we  can  now  see,  appar- 
ently instances  of  a  single  describable 
process,  which,  as  a  phenomenal  proc- 
ess, is  invariant  in  type,  whether  it 
takes  place  in  stars  or  in  plants  or  in 
poets.  This  process  the  modern  doc- 
trine of  energy,  which  was  very  incom- 
pletely developed  when  Spencer  began 
to  work  out  his  ideas,  has  undertaken 
to  formulate  in  tivo  main  propositions, 
of  which  one  deals  with  the  permanence 
of  the   quantity  of  the  energy  of  any 

closed   physical  system  within  which 
100 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

such  transformations  take  place,  while 
the  second  proposition  defines  the  di- 
rection which  the  transformations  of 
energy  take  in  a  given  system,  under 
given  conditions  (as,  for  instance,  when 
heat  energy  tends  to  pass  from  a  hotter 
to  a  colder  body).  It  is  unquestionable 
that  any  evolutionary  process  which 
takes  place  must  exemplify  both  these 
principles,  but  must  especially  illus- 
trate the  second  of  the  two.  For  the 
second,  having  to  do  with  the  direc- 
tions which  types  of  change  follow, 
defines  what  are,  in  general,  and  on  the 
whole,  irreversible  series  of  transforma- 
tions of  energy,  so  far  as  the  total  sys- 
tems concerned  are  taken  into  account. 
And  no  characteristic  of  the  evolution- 
ary processes  is  more  obvious  than  the 
fact  that,  in  all  the  important  cases, 
they  also  are  of  an  irreversible  tj^pe. 
An  organism  ages,  but  cannot  return 
to  the  type  of  its  own  early  condition. 
101 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

It  undergoes  dissolution,  but  never 
grows  young  again.  There  is,  then,  no 
doubt,  an  universal  formula,  which  in- 
cludes all  the  evolutionary  processes, 
in  so  far  as  they  have  any  describable 
physical  aspects  whatever;  and  this 
formula  is  at  least  in  part  furnished  to 
us  by  the  theory  of  energy. 

But  the  general  theory  of  energy, 
taken  by  itself,  is  too  wide  in  its  appli- 
cation to  give  us  any  physical  defini- 
tion of  what  distinguishes  evolutionary 
processes  from  those  of  the  type  of  dis- 
solution. Spencer  accordingly  singles 
out,  as  his  evolutionary  processes,  those 
instances  in  Nature  where  consolidation 
predominates.  Such  processes  go  on, 
as  instances  of  the  second  principle  of 
the  theory  of  energy,  wherever  a  sys- 
tem whose  energies  are  upon  higher 
levels  than  are  the  levels  of  the  energy 
of  its  surroundings  is  on  the  whole 
losing  what  Spencer  prefers  to  call  its 
102 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

"  contained  motion."  But,  as  Spencer 
sees,  the  most  of  the  evolutionary  proc- 
esses, and  in  particular  the  organic 
processes,  involve  sometliing  which  is 
quite  different  from  mere  consolidation. 
He  prefers  to  speak  of  this  other  as- 
pect of  the  processes  in  question  as  the 
"  secondary  evolution "  of  the  plastic 
bodies.  But  hereupon  appears  one  of 
the  most  obvious  difficulties  of  the  doc- 
trine as  stated.  In  case  of  organic 
evolution,  consolidation,  in  the  main, 
appears,  not  as  a  primary  feature  of  this 
sort  of  evolution,  —  a  feature  to  which 
the  differentiation  of  organs  is  but  an  in- 
cident, —  but  as  itself  a  comparatively 
incidental  feature ;  while  on  the  whole, 
the  very  reverse  of  consolidation  now 
predominates.  In  general,  organic  evo- 
lution involves  the  taking  in  of  energy 
from  the  environment,  and  the  consequent 
presence  of  various  anabolic  processes 
which  are,  in  type,  the  reverse  of  the 
103 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

consolidations  which  take  place  when 
bodies  cool,  stiffen,  and  grow  harder. 
Similar  assertions  can  be  made  as  to 
social  evolution,  when  the  means  of 
communication,  the  high  training  and 
nutrition  of  individuals,  the  physical 
motives  which  work  against  the  crowd- 
ing of  masses  in  single  rooms,  and  so 
on,  tend  to  introduce  more  movements 
and  wider  separations  within  the  struc- 
ture of  a  society.  It  is  indeed  true 
that,  in  all  such  cases,  there  are  vari- 
ous "  integrations  "  which  Spencer  can 
easily  point  out,  which  accompany 
these  processes  of  increasing  mobility 
and  expansion.  Tissues  harden,  cities 
grow  bigger,  crowds  in  theatres  grow 
more  numerous,  at  the  same  time  when 
the  structure  of  the  organisms  in  ques- 
tion, or  of  the  social  groups,  also  shows 
many  signs  of  absorbing  new  energies, 
and  in  so  far  of  growing  less  consoli- 
dated in  its  internal  structure.  But  it 
104 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

is  only  necessary  to  consider  how  the 
sun's  heat  is  the  supporter  of  all 
the  organic  evolutionary  processes  on 
the  earth's  surface  in  order  to  see  that, 
in  the  organic  world,  the  absorption  of 
energy,  and  the  consequent  tendency 
of  masses  of  matter  to  assume  a  less 
consolidated  structure  than  the  struc- 
ture which  characterizes  their  immedi- 
ate surroundings  in  the  inorganic  world 
together  constitute,  on  the  whole,  the 
predominant  feature  of  evolution  in 
this  realm,  while  the  consolidation 
which  bones  and  horns  and  hardened 
skin  and  crowded  cities  exemplify  is 
rather  the  subordinate  feature  of  the 
evolution  of  the  living  organisms. 

If  this  be  so,  how  can  evolution  be 
described  as  a  single  process,  of  which 
consolidation  is  the  primary,  while 
what  occurs  in  the  plastic  bodies  is  the 
secondary  aspect!  Have  we  not  rather 
one  process  in  the  inorganic  world  when 
105 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

the  sun,  losing  heat,  shrinks,  and  an- 
other, and  relatively  opposed  process, 
in  the  organic  world,  when  the  radiant 
energy  of  this  very  sun,  caught  by  the 
earth  and  the  air  in  springtime,  leads 
to  the  manifold  processes  of  expansive 
life  which  then  occur  as  the  climate 
grows  warmer?  One  of  these  processes 
is  predominantly  a  shrinking,  the  other 
a  swelling.  Or  is  it  well  to  say :  Evo- 
lution is  primarily  a  process  of  the  loss 
of  energy,  and  so  of  consolidation,  but 
secondarily  (in  plastic  bodies)  a  process 
which  includes  much  absorption  of  new 
energy  and  much  assumption  of  less 
consolidated  structure  on  the  part  of 
matter?  Do  I  evolve  when  I  primarily 
shrink,  but  secondarily  swell?  If  so, 
what  is  my  evolution,  —  the  shrinking 
or  the  swelling? 

Spencer  has  ready  his  answer,  partly, 
no  doubt,  in  the  just  mentioned  ex- 
amples of  consolidation  occurring  (as 
106 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

one  part  of  the  life-process)  in  many 
organisms.  He  may  add,  also,  that 
unless  the  sun  were  shrinking,  the  liv- 
ing organisms  would  not  get  any  new 
energy  to  absorb.  Hence,  he  may  still 
insist,  the  shrinking  is  the  "primary," 
the  expanding  aspect  of  the  anabolic 
processes  of  living  things  is  the  "  sec- 
ondary" aspect. 

But  one  answers:  "Am  I  aided  in 
understanding  evolution  as  a  single 
process  by  thus  merely  coming  to  see 
that  it  is  rather  a  complex  of  mutually 
opposed  processes?  "  I  should  indeed 
be  aided  by  just  such  an  insight  if 
Spencer  told  me  wherein  lay  the 
unity  of  these  opposed  processes  when 
they  together  constitute  evolution. 
But  he  does  not  tell  me  this,  except 
in  so  far  as  he  shows  me  that  both 
kinds  of  processes,  the  shrinking  of 
the  sun  and  the  swelling  of  the  living 

matter,   are   consequences  of    the   all- 
107 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

pervasive  energy-process.  But  that 
energy-process  includes  dissolution  as 
well  as  evolution.  Wherein  am  I 
then  yet  wiser  as  to  just  what  consti- 
tutes evolution? 

Again,  to  say  that  the  solar  system 
as  a  whole  is  steadily  losing  energy  by 
radiation,  and  is  in  so  far  "  integrating," 
while  the  heating  of  the  earth's  surface 
by  the  sun's  rays  is  only  local,  —  this  is 
not  to  show  me  that  the  first  of  these 
processes  is  a  primary  aspect  of  evolu- 
tion, while  the  other  is  only  the  second- 
ary aspect  of  evolution.  For  Spencer's 
formula  seems  to  say  that  all  evolution 
is  first  (and  unconditionally)  integra- 
tion, while,  sometimes  (conditionally), 
evolution  is  also  the  secondary  evolu- 
tion of  the  plastic  bodies.  But  what  I 
seem  to  find  is  that  not  all  evolution  is 
integration,  since  secondary  evolution 
often  means  the  very  reverse  of  inte- 
gration. In  vain  does  one  add :  "  But 
108 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

the  secondary  evolution  is  a  local  inci- 
dent; the  primary  evolution  is  more 
widespread."  I  was  not  asking  to  learn 
what  was  local  and  what  not.  What  I 
was  promised  was  a  single  consistent 
formula  for  the  general  description,  and 
then  for  the  special  types  of  the  process 
of  evolution.  I  can  therefore  indeed 
see  that,  if  all  evolution  is  a,  while,  in 
addition^  some  of  it  is  not  only  a  but  also 
h,  —  then  the  unity  of  the  formula  is 
kept,  in  that  "  primary "  evolution, 
which  is  a,  is  a  genus,  whereof  the  a 
that  is  6,  viz.,  secondary  evolution,  is 
then  a  species.  But  what  1  find  in- 
stead of  this  is  that  primary  evolution 
is  indeed  a,  while  secondary  evolution 
is  in  large  part  7wt  a,  but  the  very  re- 
verse of  a.  Where,  now,  is  the  unity 
of  the  formula? 

One  fears,  then,  that  this  is  so  far 
the  main  result :  —  Evolution  is  a  con- 
solidation, except  in  those  highly  im- 
109 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

portant  cases  where  it  is  an  expansion. 
Often  it  is  both. 

Is  this  result  contradictory!  Not  at 
all.  Many  a  process  keeps  its  unity  by 
precisely  such  an  union  of  opposing 
tendencies.  But  the  formula  is  so  far 
simply  unenlightening,  because  it  does 
not  tell  me  wherein  this  unity  lies. 

Let  us  pass  to  the  secondary  evolu- 
tion considered  in  itself.  It  involves 
two  great  features,  —  differentiation 
and  the  increase  of  definiteness  through 
segregation.  The  differentiation  is  a 
cumulative  process,  due  to  the  fact  that 
a  plastic  body  keeps  the  traces  of  what 
has  happened  to  it,  and  so  constantly 
prepares  a  basis  for  new  varieties  of 
effects  to  be  produced  upon  its  various 
parts.  The  segregation  is  due  to  the 
sorting  types  of  forces,  such  as  were 
before  exemplified  in  our  summary. 

Now  we  have  here  again  two  types 

of  processes  which  are  often  opposed 
110 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

to  each  other.  The  differentiating 
forces  of  erosion  break  off  great  rocks, 
and  also  smaller  particles,  which  so  far 
confusedly  differ  from  one  another  as 
a  glacier  carries  them  down  the  moun- 
tain valley.  Later  on  the  mountain 
torrents,  and  later  still  the  rivers  of 
the  plain,  sort  out  the  various  kinds 
of  sediment.  The  subsequent  mud- 
deposits,  stratified  and  set  in  order, 
present  less  appearance  of  heterogene- 
ity than  would  the  mass  of  unaltered 
glacial  debris.  Nature  thus  smooths 
over  rough  outlines,  arranges  "like" 
things  together,  wears  away  varieties, 
so  that  clear  contours  appear ;  in  brief, 
reduces  as  well  as  increases  varieties. 
It  is  so  in  society.  Circumstances  dif- 
ferentiate men,  and  the  "  touch  of  Na- 
ture "  makes  them  one  again.  My 
mind  differentiates  as  I  learn,  and  sim- 
plifies as  I  come  to  understand.     My 

conduct  is  more  heterogeneous  when  I 
111 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

am  learning  to  dance  than  it  is  when  I 
find  out  how  to  dance  smoothly. 

Now  one,  of  course,  need  not  tell 
Spencer  all  this.  He  knows  and  re- 
peatedly illustrates  it  all.  Nor  need 
one  talk  of  contradictions.  A  true 
process  of  evolution  no  doubt  unites 
opposed  tendencies.  But  what  one 
wants  to  know  is,  Wliat  principle^  in 
any  given  case,  gives  the  opposing  tenden- 
cies that  unity  f  This  is  what  Spencer's 
account  does  not  tell  us.  Segregation 
tends,  in  certain  respects,  towards  a 
reduction  of  the  degree  of  differentia- 
tion. What  constitutes  the  true  evolu- 
tionary union  of  these  two  processes? 

In  sum  what  one  learns  seems  to  be 
that,  in  general,  the  evolution  of  the 
plastic  bodies  involves  increasing  dif- 
ferentiation, except  where  differenti- 
ation is  diminished,  and  increased 
segregation,  except  where  the  incident- 
forces  mix  things.  Now,  all  this  is 
112 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

unquestionably  true ;  but  does  it  tell  us 
how  to  distinguish  the  true  evolution- 
ary combination  of  these  opposed  ten- 
dencies from  that  combination  which 
leads  towards  dissolution? 

The  vagueness  of  the  Spencerian 
description  of  evolution  renders  it  pos- 
sible, of  course,  to  conceive  the  form- 
ula so  interpreted  as  to  fit  any  special 
case  that  may  arise.  But  what  one 
misses  is  any  guide,  in  the  formula,  for 
the  precise  definition  of  types  of  cases 
in  advance  of  such  special  adjustments. 
Any  permanently  and  positively  useful 
generalization,  in  a  field  like  this,  must 
be  such  as  to  define  for  us,  not  merely 
something  abstract  enough  to  be  true 
whatever  happens,  but  a  more  or  less 
complete  and  exact  series  of  ideal  cases 
to  which  the  formula  can  be  deduc- 
tively applied,  in  such  wise  as  to  show 
how  the  predicates  used  in  stating  the 

generalization   are  to    be   specified  to 
8  113 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

suit  each  of  these  ideal  cases.  The 
law  of  gravitation,  the  theory  of  energy 
— these  are  not  formulas  such  as:  "All 
bodies  tend  to  approach  one  another," 
or  "  Everything  changes."  But  they 
are  formulas  that  can  be  applied,  de- 
ductively, to  predict  in  detail  the  char- 
acters of  any  one  of  an  infinite  series 
of  ideal  cases  (such  as  planets  moving 
about  suns,  masses  of  gas  cooling,  etc.). 
Now,  nobody  expects,  as  yet,  any 
mathematical  formula  for  evolution. 
But  just  because  every  case  of  evolu- 
tion is  obviously  a  case  where  mutually 
opposing  tendencies  somehow  balance 
one  another,  and  combine  into  higher 
unities,  the  requirement  for  the  situa- 
tion is,  not  that  the  philosopher  should 
tell  us  (truly  enough)  that  evolution 
involves  both  shrinkings  and  swellings, 
both  mixings  and  sortings,  both  vari- 
ety and   order,  —  but  that  he   should 

show  us  hotv  these  various  tendencies 
114 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

are,  in  the  various  types  of  evolution- 
ary process,  kept  in  that  peculiar 
balance  and  unity  which,  each  time, 
constitutes  an  evolution.  This  is  what 
Spencer  seems  not  to  have  done.  He 
was  quite  right  in  thinking  that  a 
mechanical  theory  of  the  types  of  evo- 
lutionary processes  is  a  needed  scien- 
tific theory.  For  evolution,  in  the 
phenomenal  world,  must  be  reduced 
to  physical  laws.  His  great  merit  is 
to  have  attempted  such  a  theory  at  all. 
He  aimed  at  great  things  in  a  serious 
and  frank  and  straightforward  way. 
He  stated  one  notable  problem  for  the 
coming  age.  And  to  have  done  even 
this  is  a  great  merit. 

In  sum,  Spencer  appears  as  a  phi- 
losopher of  a  beautiful  logical  naivete. 
Greneralization  was  an  absolutely  simple 
affair  for  him.  If  you  found  a  bag  big 
enough  to  hold  all  the  facts,  that  was 
an  unification  of  science.  If,  mean- 
115 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

while,  you  were  ready  to  present  a 
beautifully  ordered  series  of  illustra- 
tions of  your  theory,  this  showed  that 
5'our  facts  themselves  were  conceived 
with  a  due  respect  to  their  o^ti  orderly 
theoretical  unification.  But  orderly  ex- 
position, which  Spencer  always  had  at 
perfect  control,  is  not  necessarily  the 
same  as  the  perfection  of  one's  theory. 
The  business  of  a  theory  of  phenomena 
is  the  arrangement  of  systems  of  facts 
in  ideal  serial  orders,  according  to  con- 
cepts which  themselves  determine  both 
the  ordering  of  each  series  and  the  pre- 
cise relations  of  its  members  to  one  an- 
other. Spencer's  theory  of  evolution 
does  not  determine  the  relations  of  the 
essential  processes  of  evolution  to  one 
another,  does  not  define  their  inner 
unity,  and  does  not  enable  us  to  con- 
ceive a  series  of  types  of  evolutionaiy 
processes  in  orderly  relations  to  one 
another. 

116 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

Yet,  as  one  may  reply,  he  was  a 
pioneer.  This  is  true.  His  value  as 
such  a  pioneer  has  still  to  be  seen  in 
the  future  of  thought.  His  beautiful 
straightforwardness  of  personal  char- 
acter, his  noble  independence  of  spirit, 
his  loyalty  to  what  he  conceived  to  be 
his  task,  his  humanity,  his  advocacy 
of  rational  social  and  international 
peace  and  liberty,  —  these  things  com- 
pensate for  much  imperfection  in  the 
result  of  his  philosophy.  His  demand 
that  the  evolutionary  concepts  shall  be 
unified,  remains  a  permanently  inspir- 
ing logical  idea  which  will  bear  much 
fruit  in  future.  His  service  as  a 
teacher  of  his  age  will  never  be  for- 
gotten. His  limitations  have  their 
own  classic  finish  of  outline.  His 
place  in  the  history  of  English  think- 
ing is  significant  and  secure.  j 


117 


HERBERT    SPENCER'S 
EDUCATIONAL    THEORIES 


HERBERT    SPENCER'S 

EDUCATIONAL  THEORIES 


AMONGST    the    numerous    reflec- 
/-%     tions    to    which   a   reading   of 
Spencer's    "Autobiography" 
gives  rise,  some  memory  of  his  educa- 
tional   theories  finds    a    very  natural 
place.     I  propose,  accordingly,  in  this 
paper,  to  reconsider  some  of  Spencer's 
views  regarding  education,  and  to  do 
so  in  the  new  light  in  which  the  "  Auto- 
biography" enables  us  to  see  both  the 
man  and  his  work.    A  general  sketch 
of  Spencer's  "  Theory  of  Education,"  a 
consideration  of  how  this  theory  was 
related  to  his  own  personal  character 
121 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

and  early  training,  and  a  resulting  esti- 
mate of  the  value  of  the  theory  will 
constitute  the  task  to  which  this  paper 
is  devoted.^ 

1  The  following  essay  was  prepared,  independently  of 
the  essay  upon  Spencer's  "  Philosophy  of  Evolution,"  as 
a  paper  to  be  read  before  an  educational  conference.  As 
a  supplement  to  the  more  extended  consideration  of  his 
general  theories,  it  finds  its  place  in  the  present  book. 


122 


DURING-  the  years  between  1850 
and  1860,  Spencer,  then  be- 
tween thirty  and  forty  years 
of  age,  was  a  frequent  contributor  to 
various  periodicals.  In  1850  he  had 
published  his  first  work,  the  "Social 
Statics,"  a  treatise  on  the  application 
of  certain  ethical  ideas  to  the  man- 
agement of  society,  and  in  particu- 
lar to  the  theory  of  government. 
This  first  work  had,  as  its  consequence, 
a  somewhat  rapid  development  of 
Spencer's  own  ideas  in  the  direction 
of  his  subsequent  "  System  of  Syn- 
thetic Philosophy."  The  development 
in  question  led  through  the  prepara- 
tion of  the  first  form  of  his  work  on 
"The  Principles  of  Psychology,"  —  a 
123 


HERBERT    SPENCER 

book  in  which  he  gave  the  first  ex- 
pression to  his  view  of  the  doctrine 
of  evolution.  This  volume  was  pub- 
lished in  1855.  The  Spencerian  con- 
ception of  evolution  now  quickly  grew 
more  definite,  and  was  applied  to  more 
various  classes  of  facts.  The  article 
on  "Progress,  its  Law  and  Cause," 
was  prepared  in  the  early  months  of 

1857,  and  constituted  what  Spencer 
himself  calls  "  the  initial  instalment 
of  the  '  Synthetic  Philosophy.'  "  The 
plan,  however,  of  writing  and  issuing 
his  connected  system  did  not  assume 
the  form  of  a  written  prospectus  until 

1858.  In  1860  the  definitive  pro- 
gramme of  the  system,  much  revised, 
was  issued,  and  the  undertaking  of 
writing  the  "First  Principles"  began 
May  7,  1860. 

Otherwise,  however,  during  the  dec- 
ade   in    question,   Spencer    had    been 
busied  with  such  essay-writing  as  his 
124 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

varied  relations  with  a  number  of 
journals  and  reviews,  and  the  trend 
of  his  own  interests,  had  determined. 
His  mode  of  life,  during  those  years, 
was  that  of  a  bachelor  literary  man 
who  lived,  now  in  London,  now  in  va- 
rious country  places,  as  circumstances 
and  his  mood  determined.  He  had 
deliberately  abandoned,  long  since,  his 
first  profession  of  engineering  for  such 
opportunities  as  editorial  and  essay- 
work  might  give  him  to  develop  his 
mind,  to  enjoy  his  own  intellectual 
freedom,  and  to  influence  the  thinking 
of  his  time.  Social  problems,  the  study 
of  human  nature,  and  the  questions  of 
general  science  principally  concerned 
him.  It  was  to  this  period  of  the  50' s 
that  the  most  notable  of  the  early 
papers  which  still  appear  in  his  col- 
lected essays  belong. 

Amongst  other  topics,  however,  the 
problems    of  education   attracted    his 
125 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

attention.  The  four  papers  which  are 
now  to  be  found  in  his  volume  on 
"Education"  belong  to  the  decade 
which  is  here  in  question.  In  1854  ap- 
peared a  paper  on  "  The  Art  of  Educa- 
tion," now  the  second  of  the  essays  of 
the  volume  on  education.  In  1859  the 
essay  on  "  Physical  Education "  was 
published  in  the  "  British  Quarterly,  " 
and  the  two  other  papers  which  make 
up  the  volume  on  education  are  prod- 
ucts of  the  same  period.  In  1860  this 
volume  was  published  in  America,  the 
"  North  British  Review "  not  permit- 
ting the  republication  in  England  of 
two  of  the  papers.  The  work  has  re- 
mained, so  far  as  I  am  aware,  sub- 
stantially unchanged. 

The  book  on  education  thus  belongs 
to  the  formative  period  of  Spencer's 
philosophical  career.  In  its  relation 
to  his  life  it  appears  as  a  sort  of 
summary  review  of  the  lessons  which 
126 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

his  childliood  training  and  his  youth- 
ful studies  had  taught  him;  while,  in 
turn,  its  formulation  furnished  to  his 
thought  one  of  the  numerous  illustra- 
tions of  that  general  conception  of 
evolution  which  he  was  soon  to  at- 
tempt to  apply  to  all  regions  of  the 
organic  and  inorganic  realms.  Spen- 
cer's theory  of  education  is  thus  not 
a  mere  corollary  of  his  general  sys- 
tematic doctrine  of  evolution,  since 
his  educational  ideas  occurred  to  him 
during  the  time  when  this  systematic 
doctrine  was  still  in  process  of  assum- 
ing form  in  his  mind.  On  the  other 
hand,  his  theory  of  education  is  indeed 
intimately  related,  in  his  mind,  to  the 
general  evolutionary  doctrine ;  because 
the  same  motives  which  led  him  to  his 
system  led  him  also  to  define  how  he 
viewed  the  task  of  the  teacher. 

These  four  essays  on  education  are, 
or  at  least  until  recently  were,  amongst 
127 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

the  best  known  general  guides  which 
our  more  progressive  American  school 
teachers  and  writers  on  the  art  of 
teaching  have  been  disposed  to  consult 
and  to  discuss.  Still,  I  suppose  that 
I  cannot  assume  their  contents  to  be 
perfectly  fresh  in  the  mind  of  every 
one  of  my  readers.  I  must  therefore 
sketch,  in  the  rudest  outline,  their 
contents. 

The  first  paper,  on  "  What  Knowl- 
edge is  of  Most  Worth! "  contains 
Spencer's  famous,  and,  in  its  way,  un- 
doubtedly classic  statement  of  the  case 
in  favor  of  giving  to  the  study  of  nat- 
ural science  the  most  prominent  place 
in  a  rational  curriculum.  "  Before 
there  can  be  a  rational  curriculum," 
says  Spencer,  "we  must  settle  which 
things  it  most  concerns  us  to  know. 
...  To  this  end,  a  measure  of  value 
is  the  first  requisite."  But  now : 
"  Everyone  in  contending  for  the 
128 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

worth  of  any  particular  order  of  in- 
formation, does  so  by  showing  its  bear- 
ing upon  some  part  of  life,"  by  showing 
that  a  given  sort  of  learning  "  bene- 
ficially influences  action,  —  saves  from 
evil  or  secures  good,  —  conduces  to  hap- 
piness." "  How  to  live,"  continues 
Spencer,  "that  is  the  essential  ques- 
tion for  us.  Not  how  to  live  in  the 
mere  material  sense  only,  but  in  the 
widest  sense.  To  prepare  us  for  com- 
plete living  is  the  function  which 
education  has  to  discharge;  and  the 
only  rational  mode  of  judging  of  any 
educational  course  is  to  judge  in  what 
degree  it  discharges  such  function." 

Now  to  live  means  to  carry  out  cer- 
tain kinds  of  activity,  which  may  be 
classified  under  five  heads.  These  are : 
first,  "those  activities  which  directly 
minister  to  self-preservation;  second, 
those  activities  which,  by  securing  the 
necessaries  of  life,  indirectly  minister 
9  129 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

to  self-preservation ;  third,  those  activi- 
ties which  have  for  their  end  the  rear- 
ing and  discipline  of  offspring ;  fourth, 
those  activities  which  are  involved  in 
the  maintenance  of  proper  social  and 
political  relations;  fifth,  those  miscel- 
laneous activities  which  make  up  the 
leisure  part  of  life,  devoted  to  the  grati- 
fication of  the  tastes  and  of  the  feel- 
ings." The  classes  thus  stated  are 
named,  says  Spencer,  in  the  order 
which  is  also  that  of  their  "  true  sub- 
ordination." For  unless  one  first 
preserves  himself  from  moment  to 
moment,  he  can  do  nothing  else ;  and 
of  the  types  of  activity  which  follow 
in  the  list,  it  is  plain  that  some  meas- 
ure of  success  in  each  type  is  a  conditio 
sine  qua  non  of  any  success  in  any  of 
the  succeeding  types. 

Some  degree  of  training  in  each  of 
these  types  of  activity  belongs  to  the 
purpose  of  any  rational  system  of  edu- 
130 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

cation.  There  should  be,  however,  the 
most  careful  training  in  the  most  essen- 
tial and  important  types;  and  the  de- 
gree of  training  in  each  type  of  activity 
should  be  proportioned  to  the  value 
of  that  type  in  the  series  of  successive 
types.  That  is,  whatever  training  you 
have  time  to  give  a  man  in  the  types 
of  activity,  which  are  to  occupy  his 
leisure  time,  you  should,  in  any  case, 
give  him  more  careful  training  still  in 
the  activities  which  concern  him  as  a 
citizen  or  as  a  member  of  society,  and 
more  careful  training  still  in  his  duties 
as  a  parent;  and  you  should  be  most 
of  all  careful  that  he  learns  what  is 
essential  to  self-preservation.  More- 
over, knowledge  relating  to  the  activi- 
ties of  any  type  is  more  important  in 
proportion  as  it  has  intrinsic  and  uni- 
versally valid  connections,  rather  than 
transient  or  conventional  connections, 
with  that  sort  of  activity.  And  knowl- 
131 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

edge  has  also  a  value  not  only  in  itself, 
but  in  so  far  as  it  constitutes  a  means 
of  discipline  of  the  mind,  and  is  thus 
useful  as  a  mental  exercise. 

Having  set  forth  these  preliminary- 
considerations,  Spencer  proceeds  to 
show  what  sort  of  knowledge  best 
furthers  each  of  the  five  kinds  of 
activities.  Our  activities  which  tend 
to  self-preservation  need  to  be  sup- 
ported by  a  knowledge  of  the  laws 
and  conditions  of  health.  ''A  course 
of  Physiology "  such  "as  is  needful 
for  the  comprehension  of  its  general 
truths,  and  their  bearings  on  daily 
conduct,  is  an  all-essential  part  of  a 
rational  education."  The  indirectly 
self-preservative  activities  of  the  sec- 
ond type,  namely  those  which  involve 
earning  our  livelihood,  are  in  general 
to  be  furthered  by  a  knowledge  of 
physics,  of  chemistry,  and  of  biology, 
and,  in  case  of  the  more  exact  arts  and 
132 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

activities,  by  a  knowledge  of  mathe- 
matics. Industrial  success  also  de- 
pends upon  some  sort  of  knowledge 
of  the  laws  which  obtain  in  the  life 
of  society.  The  activities  which  have 
to  do  with  the  care  and  the  training  of 
children  are  not  to  be  wisely  carried 
out  unless  aided  by  a  knowledge  of  the 
laws  of  child  life.  Therefore,  "  Some 
acquaintance  with  the  first  principles 
of  physiology  and  the  elementary 
truths  of  psychology  is  indispensable," 
says  Spencer,  "  for  the  right  bringing 
up  of  children." 

As  for  the  fourth  class  of  human 
activities,  those  of  the  citizen,  a  knowl- 
edge not  of  the  trivial  gossip  of  what 
is  usually  called  history,  but  of  the 
laws  of  society,  is  essential  for  the 
proper  and  successful  performance  of 
the  work  of  citizenship.  And  thus,  to 
sum  up,  as  regards  all  those  human 
activities  which  are  directly  or  in- 
133 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

directly  devoted  to  self-preservation, 
or  which  are  concerned  with  the  duties 
of  the  parent  or  of  the  citizen,  the 
knowledge  that  is  most  needed  is  the 
knowledge  of  some  branch  or  branches 
of  science.  Physiology,  psychology, 
social  science,  and  in  their  respective 
places,  mathematics,  physics,  chem- 
istry, —  these  comprise,  then,  the 
branches  of  knowledge  which  are  of 
the  most  worth. 

It  might  be  supposed  that  the  fifth 
type  of  human  activities,  those  con- 
cerned with  the  leisure  portion  of  life, 
would  emphasize  the  relative  impor- 
tance of  other  types  of  knowledge  be- 
sides those  which  belong  to  the  pursuit 
of  the  various  natural  and  social  sci- 
ences. But  Spencer  now  proceeds  to 
the  decidedly  famous  assertions  which 
here  follow.  To  the  question,  "  What 
knowledge  is  of  most  use  .  .  .  what 
knowledge  best  fits  for  this  remaining 
134 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

sphere  of  activity  ?  "  viz.,  for  the  activ- 
ities that  have  to  do  with  cultivation, 
with  art,  and  with  refinement,  Spencer 
answers:  "Unexpected  as  the  assertion 
may  be,  it  is  nevertheless  true,  that  the 
highest  art  of  every  kind  is  based  upon 
Science  —  that  without  Science  there 
can  be  neither  perfect  production  nor 
full  appreciation."  Painting,  sculp- 
ture, music,  poetry,  Spencer  hereupon 
insists,  are  arts  whose  productive  ar- 
tists depend,  for  their  success,  upon  a 
knowledge  of  natural  facts  and  natural 
laws,  be  this  knowledge  one  of  optics 
or  of  the  laws  of  equilibrium,  of  the 
psychology  of  human  passion,  or  of 
the  psychology  of  speech.  Whoever  is 
justly  to  appreciate  art  must  possess, 
in  some  form,  the  same  sort  of  knowl- 
edge. Usually,  artists  and  observers 
alike  depend  upon  hastily  acquired 
and  ill  generalized  knowledge  of  the 
types  in  question.  It  would  be  better, 
135 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

he  insists,  if  their  knowledge  were 
more  accurate  and  better  generalized. 
This  could  occur  only  in  case  both 
artist  and  admirer  of  art  are  duly- 
possessed  of  the  necessary  scientific 
knowledge.  Thus  in  case  of  the  fifth 
type  of  activities,  as  well  as  in  case  of 
the  other  and  more  necessary  types, 
the  knowledge  that  is  of  most  worth 
is  the  knowledge  of  the  sciences. 

Similar  considerations  result  if  one 
asks  whether  scientific  knowledge, 
rather  than  other  types  of  knowl- 
edge, possesses  merely  conventional 
and  transient  value,  or  whether,  on  the 
contrary,  it  possesses  permanent  and 
intrinsic  value.  Custom,  Spencer  in- 
sists, may  indeed  make  the  writing  of 
Latin  poetry  a  temporarily  dignified 
sign  of  cultivation;  but  nature  it  is 
which  renders  all  scientific  knowledge 
permanently  important.  Accident  may 
set  everybody  busy  trying  to  know 
136 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

about  some  popular  hero,  e.  g.,  Napo- 
leon. But  permanently  important  truth 
about  the  laws  of  society  possesses  no 
accidental,  but  rather  an  intrinsic  sig- 
nificance, which  no  popular  whim  can 
generate  or  destroy.  Moreover,  the 
disciplinary  value  of  scientific  knowl- 
edge is  greater  than  that  of  other 
kinds  of  knowledge.  Nothing  trains 
the  mind  better  than  the  study  of 
nature. 

In  sum,  then,  from  every  point  of 
view  science,  in  the  sense  of  the 
orderly  knowledge  of  the  laws  of 
things,  is  that  sort  of  knowledge  which 
is  of  most  worth.  Hence,  the  current 
system  of  classical  training  is  not  only 
defective,  thinks  Spencer,  but  it  is,  in 
its  principle,  fundamentally  and  hope- 
lessly at  fault.  It  not  only  lays  the 
sole  stress  upon  the  least  important  of 
the  five  types  of  human  activities, — 
those  which  belong  to  the  leisure  por- 
187 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

tion  of  life,  —  but  it  emphasizes  meth- 
ods of  work  which  are  not  suited  to 
the  best  development  even  of  this  type 
of  activities.  The  Grreek  scholar  is  led 
to  judge  of  poetry  without  understand- 
ing psychology,  to  estimate  architec- 
ture without  knowing  anything  about 
statics,  and  to  pass  as  a  judge  of  sculp- 
ture, although  he  is  ignorant  of  anat- 
omy. As  he  has  not  learned  to  observe 
nature,  he  cannot  wisely  enjoy  art. 

Moreover,  the  current  study  of  his- 
tory, thinks  Spencer,  lays  stress  on 
whatever  is  trivial  in  the  affairs  of 
the  past,  and  does  not  fit  the  student 
to  comprehend  sociology.  Hence  the 
humanities,  as  they  are  studied,  are  not 
useful  to  aid  the  student  even  in  that 
comprehension  of  human  nature  which 
one  needs  in  training  children,  or  in 
performing  one's  duties  as  a  citizen. 
An  entire  reform  of  the  educational 
system  in  the  interests  of  science  —  a 
138 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

reform  from  top  to  bottom  —  is  con- 
sequently, in  Spencer's  opinion,  a 
requirement  of  the  time,  and  a  re- 
quirement which,  as  he  also  holds,  the 
time,  so  far,  wholly  misunderstands. 

Such  is  the  famous  first  amongst 
Spencer's  four  papers  on  education, 
—  a  paper  which  will  long  remain  a 
classic  expression  of  its  author's  in- 
sight, power,  and  limitations.  From 
the  complex  problems  of  education  in 
our  own  day  we  may  well  look  back 
with  envy  upon  one  to  whose  view  the 
problem  "  What  knowledge  is  of  most 
worth!  "  could  appear  so  enviably  solu- 
ble, so  beautifully  uncomplicated.  You 
fail  to  understand,  perhaps  even  to  pro- 
duce, poetry.  Well,  then;  study  psy- 
chology and  phonetics.  They  may  not 
overcome  your  difficulties ;  but  therein 
lies  the  sort  of  knowledge  that  you 
most  need  in  order  to  cultivate  your 
poetical  appreciation.  You  wish  to 
139 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

become  a  sculptor.  Well,  you  are  to 
use  marble.  Your  success  will  there- 
fore doubtless  be  furthered  if  you 
make  prominent  not  only  the  study 
of  anatomy,  but  also  the  general  theory 
of  the  strength  of  materials,  and  the 
principles  of  dynamics,  or  perhaps  of 
chemistry.  Tennyson  writes  in  the 
"Two  Voices":  — 

"  'T  is  life  of  which  our  veins  are  scant, 
More  life  and  fuller  that  we  want." 

One  of  Tennyson's  two  voices  ought 
to  have  been  thoughtful  enough  to 
remark  that,  if  this  really  is  what  we 
want,  w^e  had  better  study  Foster's 
"Physiology,"  and  also  take  a  labora- 
tory course  in  the  science! 

Now,  seriously,  in  our  own  day,  when 
the  high  worth  of  scientific  study  is  in- 
deed so  cordially  recognized,  what  one 
can  still  object  to  a  view  of  this  type  is 
not,  of  course,  that  it  is  merely  false, 
but  that  it  marvellously,  and  with  the 
140 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

relative  falsity  of  one-sidedness  simpli- 
flies  the  problem  both  of  life  and  of 
education.  In  these  days,  there  is  no 
longer  danger,  at  least  in.  our  country, 
that  the  true  and  deep  significance  of 
scientific  studies  shall  fail  to  be  recog- 
nized. Meanwhile,  it  is  indeed  un- 
questionably a  merit  of  this  very  essay 
of  Spencer  to  have  stated,  in  the  middle 
decade  of  the  last  century,  and  in  Eng- 
land, so  simply,  so  cogently,  so  popu- 
larly, a  plea  for  the  study  of  the  natural 
sciences.  But  our  wonder,  as  we  read 
to-day,  is  how  Spencer  can  possibly 
have  interpreted  the  educational  prob- 
lem in  such  simple  terms.  It  is  not 
that  he  has  given  so  much  value  to  the 
special  sciences,  but  that  he  is  so  un- 
able to  observe  the  values  that  belong 
to  other  types  of  human  learning.  Just 
here  it  is  that  his  "Autobiography" 
will  help  us  to  understand  the  naivete 
with  which  he  defended  this  position, 
141 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

and  why  the  educational  world  seemed 
to  him  so  simply  definable. 

The  second  of  the  essays  of  the  vol- 
ume upon  education  is  that  upon  "  In- 
tellectual Education."  It  deals  with 
the  central  problems  of  the  method  of 
teaching  elementary  science  to  young 
minds.  Its  maxims  have  now  entered 
so  completely  into  the  life  of  many 
teachers  of  elementary  science,  that 
here  a  very  brief  exposition  will  suffice. 
The  pupil,  as  Spencer  teaches  us,  is  to 
be  made,  from  the  outset,  so  far  as 
possible,  an  investigator  of  nature.  He 
is  not  only  to  come  into  contact  with 
natural  facts  at  first  hand,  but  he  is  to 
be  taught  to  generalize  his  own  prin- 
ciples through  an  inductive  study  of 
the  problems  which  the  facts  suggest. 
To  as  small  an  extent  as  possible  is  he 
to  learn  by  rote,  to  as  small  a  degree  as 
possible  is  he  to  be  guided  by  author- 
ity, or  led  to  lean  upon  the  crutch  of 
142 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

his  teacher's  explanations.  He  must, 
above  all,  learn  the  art  of  observation. 
Moreover,  he  must  be  so  guided  that 
the  acquisition  of  knowledge  shall  be 
pleasurable  rather  than  painful.  The 
lessons  of  the  field  and  of  the  play- 
ground shall  be,  especially  in  early 
years,  a  very  important  part  of  the  cur- 
riculum. The  order  of  learning  must 
correspond,  moreover,  with  the  order 
of  the  evolution  of  the  mind.  In  our 
teaching  we  must  proceed  from  the 
simple  to  the  complex,  just  as  the  mind 
itself  in  its  natural  evolution  grows 
from  simplicity  to  complexity.  We 
must  proceed  also  from  the  concrete  to 
the  abstract,  from  the  singular  and  the 
particular  to  general  principles.  "  The 
education  of  the  child  must  accord 
both  in  mode  and  arrangement  with 
the  education  of  mankind  considered 
historically."  We  must  therefore  also 
proceed  from  the  empirical  to  the 
143 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

rational.  "  Every  study  should  have  a 
purely  experimental  introduction,  and 
only  after  an  ample  fund  of  observa- 
tions has  been  accumulated,  should 
reasoning  begin."  The  whole  process 
should  be,  as  far  as  possible,  one  of 
"  self-development  "  on  the  part  of  the 
child.  Children  "  should  be  told  as 
little  as  possible,  and  induced  to  6?^s- 
cover  as  much  as  possible."  The  final 
test  "whereby  we  judge  "  any  plan  of 
culture "  should  meanwhile  be  the 
question,  "  Does  it  create  a  pleasurable 
excitement  in  the  pupils?"  "When 
in  doubt,"  says  Spencer,  "whether  a 
particular  mode  or  arrangement  is  or 
is  not  more  in  harmony  with  the  fore- 
going principles  than  some  other,  we 
may  safely  abide  by  this  criterion." 
For,  as  to  the  value  of  a  study  for  a 
given  child,  "  a  child's  intellectual  in- 
stincts are  more  trustworthy  than  our 
reasonings." 

144 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

Spencer  proceeds  to  apply  these  prin- 
ciples to  the  doctrine  of  the  education 
of  the  senses,  to  the  early  stages  of 
nature-study,  and  then  to  the  more 
complex  processes  whereby  the  child 
passes,  as  he  grows,  to  a  comprehen- 
sion of  the  wider  connections  and  the 
more  general  principles  of  the  natural 
sciences.  Our  philosopher  discusses 
the  use  of  drawing  as  a  means  of  train- 
ing a  child's  powers  of  observation,  and 
considers  the  suitable  course  whereby 
the  child  can  be  led  to  a  knowledge  of 
the  laws  of  perspective,  and  to  the 
point  where  he  can  grasp  geometrical 
principles.  The  "  self-instruction"  thus 
initiated  and  guided  is  to  become  the 
basis  for  a  voluntary  and  self -directed 
educational  course  which  shall  continue 
into  mature  years  and  throughout  life. 

The  third  of  the  essays  on  educa- 
tion, and  one  of  the  most  frequently 
criticised,  contains  the  famous  doctrine 
10  145 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

of  the  "  discipline  of  consequences  "  as 
the  true  basis  of  any  sound  moral  educa- 
tion. Instead  of  external  and  arbitrary 
commands,  counsels,  and  penalties,  the 
child  should  be  trained  and  coerced 
into  good  conduct  only  by  contact  with 
nature  and  with  his  fellows,  and  by  his 
own  needs,  physical,  social,  intellectual, 
and  emotional.  To  be  sure,  counsel 
may  unobtrusively  aid  in  the  process. 
But  after  due  warning  from  his  parent 
or  teacher  has  preceded,  and  has  been 
disregarded,  then  the  pain  of  the  bum 
which  a  careless  playing  with  fire  on 
the  child's  part  involves  will  teach  him 
not  only  to  dread  the  fire,  but  to  be 
willingly  more  considerate  henceforth 
of  the  warnings  which  he  hears  from 
the  same  source.  When  he  himself  is 
unkind,  the  natural  penalty  is  the  tem- 
porary loss  of  that  friendship  which  his 
guardians,  if  they  are  wise,  will  long 
since  have  established  with  him.  Coer- 
146 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

cion,  like  intellectual  training,  must 
thus  be  self-developed.  That  is,  the 
child  must  learn  to  hold  himself  in 
check,  by  getting  every  proper  oppor- 
tunity to  learn  why  such  checks  are  in 
accordance  with  his  own  physical  in- 
terests, and  are  inevitable  accompani- 
ments of  a  happy  social  life. 

The  fourth  and  final  essay  is  con- 
cerned with  the  problems  of  physical 
nurture  and  training,  and  here  interests 
us  less,  despite  what  I  suppose  to  be 
its  considerable  historical  importance 
as  a  means  whereby  general  attention 
was  attracted  to  the  importance  of  this 
aspect  of  school  life. 


147 


II 


OUR  hasty  review  of  the  essays 
on  education  has  already  shown 
us  that  these  papers  are  espe- 
cially characterized  by  a  certain  notable 
directness,  by  their  simplicity,  and  by 
their  absence  of  care  for  the  harder 
complications  of  educational  theory. 
Just  as  Spencer's  doctrine  regarding 
"  What  knowledge  is  of  most  worth  ?  " 
knows  no  scruples  regarding  those  as- 
pects of  life  and  of  conduct  concerning 
which  no  special  natural  science  gives 
the  learner  sufficiently  definite  counsel, 
precisely  so  his  admirable  statement 
of  the  method  of  elementary  nature- 
study  shows  no  sign  of  recognizing  cer- 
tain other  problems  of  method  which 
are  not  to  be  solved  merely  by  arous- 
148 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

ing  a  pleasurable  excitement  in  the 
child,  nor  by  teaching  him  to  observe 
phenomena,  nor  by  encouraging  him 
to  make  his  own  generalizations  from 
particular  natural  facts.  And  precisely 
so,  whoever  really  knows  men,  is  aware 
that  the  "discipline  of  consequences," 
important  though  it  unquestionably  is, 
is  by  no  means  the  whole  story  of 
the  means  whereby  we  war  with  the 
moral  ills  of  human  nature.  The  whole 
Spencerian  account  is  that  of  a  man 
innocent,  so  to  speak,  of  some  of  the 
greatest  of  human  issues,  a  man  to 
whom  certain  beautifully  clear  and 
simple  ideas  suffice  as  the  expression 
of  the  whole  business  of  living.  Yet, 
on  the  other  hand,  you  see  as  you 
read,  that  this  is  indeed  no  man  of 
the  closet,  but  a  man  acquainted,  and 
well  acquainted,  with  just  those  as- 
pects of  his  physical  and  of  his  social 
world  which  he  chances  to  find  of 
149 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

interest.  He  is,  withal,  a  genuinely 
humane  man,  who  loves  human  liberty, 
respects  the  rights  and  the  interests  of 
children,  and  desires  to  have  no  man 
externally  constrained  by  any  require- 
ments save  those  of  nature  and  of  the 
general  welfare  of  other  men.  The 
narrowness  of  Spencer's  outlook  into 
the  field  of  education  is  as  obvious  as 
is  the  wholesomeness  of  his  attitude 
towards  all  the  educational  problems 
that  he  actually  comprehends.  And 
so  the  reader  is  led  to  ask.  How  came 
Spencer  by  these  his  insights  and  his 
limitations  ^  He  was  himself  no  prac- 
tical teacher.  How  came  he  to  know 
so  well  the  curiosity  of  the  actually 
inquiring  child  who  loves  nature  ? 
How  came  he  to  comprehend  so  well 
the  business  of  the  teacher  of  elemen- 
tary natural  science  to  children  ?  On 
the  other  hand,  he  was  by  deliberate 
choice  a  philosopher.  How  then  came 
160 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

he  to  ignore  so  wide  a  range  of  vital 
human  interests  as  he  did  ignore  ? 

To  all  such  questions  the  "  Auto- 
biography ' '  now  furnishes  a  most  inter- 
esting answer.  For  it  shows  us  that 
Spencer's  account  of  the  ideals  and  of 
the  problems  of  the  teacher  is  little 
other  than  a  direct  confession  of  his 
own  experience,  not  indeed  as  a  teacher 
of  other  people's  children,  but  as  a 
pupil  of  his  father.  His  own  father 
was  his  model  of  what  the  elementary- 
teacher  of  science,  in  dealing  with  chil- 
dren, ought  to  be.  His  own  youthful 
experience  —  the  experience  of  a  mor- 
ally very  sound  and  admirable  boy  — 
had  given  him  an  acquaintance  with 
the  discipline  of  consequences  as  the 
basis,  in  his  own  case,  for  a  very  whole- 
some moral  education.  His  own  later 
nervous  invalidism,  which  developed 
during  the  50' s,  and  which  was  ac- 
companied by  a  good  deal  of  over- 
151 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

concern  about  his  bodily  sensations, 
had  rendered  him  peculiarly  interested 
in  the  problems  of  physical  training. 
Hence  his  essay  on  that  topic.  His 
range  of  scientific  studies,  his  own 
earlier  practical  use  of  these  studies 
in  connection  with  engineering  work, 
and  his  later  disposition  to  general- 
ize ideas  derived  from  these  scientific 
studies  so  as  to  make  them  applicable 
to  the  whole  field  of  philosophical  in- 
quiry,—  these  are  the  motives  which 
express  themselves  in  his  personal 
estimate  of  the  relative  importance  of 
scientific  knowledge.  The  book  on 
education  is  thus  indeed  no  arbitrary 
invention  of  a  doctrinaire,  who  devises 
programmes  for  other  people.  It  is  in 
itself  a  sort  of  generalized  autobiog- 
raphy. It  has  therefore  all  the  naivete 
of  the  man  who  says,  "  Thus  I  grew; 
and  so  ought  any  man  to  grow." 
*'  Thus  I  am ;  and,  except  for  my  in- 
152 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

validism,  so  would  any  man  be  happy 
to  be,  if  only  the  world  would  stop 
interfering  with  him."  The  calm  as- 
surance with  which  Spencer  thus  views 
all  other  men's  life-problems  in  terms 
of  his  own  personal  experience  is 
characteristic.  To  be  sure,  he  mean- 
while lays  great  stress  upon  personal 
independence,  upon  individual  rights. 
He  does  not  wish  to  force  his  ways 
upon  anybody.  He  would  let  every 
man  grow,  so  far  as  possible,  in  that 
man's  own  way.  But  he  is  convinced, 
upon  the  basis  of  his  own  experience, 
that  there  is  substantially  only  one 
way  to  grow,  —  viz.,  by  observing 
natural  objects  in  childhood,  by  learn- 
ing to  make  one's  own  generalizations, 
and  by  profiting  from  the  moral  dis- 
cipline of  consequences.  In  brief, 
Spencer  is  indeed  an  individualist ;  but 
he  recognizes,  after  all,  only  one  essen- 
tially important  sort  of  individual,  — 
153 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

viz.,  an  individual  of  the  intellectual 
and  moral  temperament  of  Herbert 
Spencer.  That  he  actually  meets,  in 
the  England  of  his  time,  with  so  few 
other  individuals  who  seem  now  to  be 
of  this  type,  —  this  fact  appears  to  him 
to  be  due  simply  to  the  vicious  national 
system  of  education.  Let  any  boy 
alone  in  the  right  way,  but  encourage 
him  to  observe  nature,  and  he  will 
become,  in  his  own  measure,  an  essen- 
tially Spencerian  sort  of  person.  Force 
upon  him  the  classics,  teach  him  gram- 
mar, coerce  him  as  the  English  boys 
in  the  antiquated  public  schools  are 
coerced,  and  then,  indeed,  he  may  turn 
into  a  professor  of  Greek,  or  a  theolo- 
gian, or  a  Tory,  or  some  other  objec- 
tionable type  of  slave  to  tradition.  As 
a  fact,  human  nature  is  one,  and 
healthy  training  can  conform  to  but 
one  type.  It  seems  hardly  excessive 
to  interpret  Spencer  in  this  way. 
154 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

How  easily  Spencer  emphasizes  his 
own  personal  point  of  view  as  he  de- 
fines what  it  is  objectively  important 
for  a  man  to  know  is  suggested,  in  the 
course  of  his  first  essay,  by  a  very  char- 
acteristic remark.  In  this  essay,  in 
one  passage,  he  has  occasion  to  illus- 
trate, by  peculiarly  obvious  and  im- 
pressive instances,  how  the  truths  of 
science,  unlike  the  vain  traditions  of 
classical  or  of  historical  education, 
have  a  worth  which  is  not  conven- 
tional or  transient,  but  intrinsic  and 
permanent.  He  therefore  needs,  in 
order  to  show  this,  to  name  a  few 
very  vital  and  certain  scientific  princi- 
ples. He  actually  names  the  follow- 
ing: "Such  facts,"  he  says,  "as  that 
sensations  of  numbness  and  tingling 
commonly  precede  paralysis,  that  the 
resistance  of  water  to  a  body  moving 
through  it  varies  as  the  square  of  the 
velocity,  that  chlorine  is  a  disinfectant, 
155 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

—  these,  and  the  truths  of  science  in 
general,  are  of  intrinsic  value;  they 
will  bear  on  human  conduct  ten  thou- 
sand years  hence  as  they  do  now." 
This  selection  of  vitally  important  sci- 
entific truths  is,  I  say,  characteristic. 
For  the  first  momentous  truth  of  sci- 
ence which  Spencer  here  mentions — 
the  assertion  about  numbness  and  tin- 
gling as  warning  symptoms  of  coming 
paralysis — hardly  seems  to-day,  I  think, 
to  have  the  significance  which  he  at- 
tributed to  it.  It  is  apparently  more 
momentous  to  observe  that  a  very 
large  class  of  neurasthenic  sufferers 
pretty  persistently  complain  of  numb- 
ness here  or  there  in  their  bodies,  and 
of  various  other  false  sensations,  and 
that  just  these  people  are  consequently 
often  disposed  to  worry,  very  obsti- 
nately, over  the  idea  that  they  are 
about  to  be  paralyzed.  This  symptom, 
not  of  any  actually  impending  apoplec- 
156 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

tic  attack,  but  of  nervous  hypochon- 
dria, is  one  of  the  commonest  of  the 
complaints  of  patients  of  the  type  to 
which  Spencer  himself,  from  1855  on, 
belonged.  The  bearing  of  the  prin- 
ciple on  human  conduct  is,  therefore, 
probably  this:  Since  some  such  pa- 
tients live,  like  Spencer,  to  be  eighty 
years  old,  and  since  very  many  of  them 
indeed  never  get  any  nearer  to  para- 
lytic seizures  than  thus  to  complain, 
most  of  them  need  not  worry  over 
their  numbness.  For  their  apoplexy, 
if  ever,  and  whenever,  it  chances  to 
come  upon  them,  is  very  likely,  in  its 
mean-spirited  way,  to  give  them  no  pre- 
monitory sensations  whatever  to  men- 
tion in  their  essays  as  illustrations  of 
momentous  scientific  truths. 

The  insistence   here  in  question  is 
indeed  but  a  trifling  matter.     Yet  of 
itself  it  suggests  what  the  "  Autobiog- 
raphy "    shows   us  in   detail,  namely, 
157 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

that  Spencer's  essays  on  education  are 
themselves,  in  a  very  marked  sense, 
the  outcome  of  autobiographical  reflec- 
tions. To  say  this  is  of  course  not  for 
a  moment  to  set  the  whole  educational 
theory  in  question  upon  a  level  with 
the  very  pretty  fragment  of  uncon- 
scious nervous  confession  just  men- 
tioned. A  man  like  Spencer  is  to  be 
judged,  of  course,  not  by  his  chance 
words,  but  by  his  larger  views.  And 
as  a  fact,  if  his  head-symptoms  made 
him,  from  early  middle  life  on,  some- 
what over-anxious  about  himself,  his 
own  early  training  had  been,  in  its 
own  way,  both  physically  and  mentally 
a  model  of  a  normal  and  a  wholesome 
process  of  development.  One  can  only 
envy  him  the  chance  to  be  himself 
which  this  training  had  involved.  One 
can  also  only  admire  this  entire  process 
as  indeed,  when  rightly  estimated,  a 
model  for  the  training  of  other  men. 
158 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

But  the  true  lesson  of  the  model  is 
that  other  men,  of  types  far  removed 
from  Spencer's,  can  only  be  trained  as 
well  as  he  was  trained,  in  case  methods 
are  individualized  for  their  needs,  as 
Spencer's  father  so  happily  individual- 
ized the  method  of  training  for  the 
young  Spencer's  needs.  It  does  not 
follow  that  what  knowledge  was  of 
most  worth  for  Herbert  Spencer  must 
needs  be  of  most  worth  for  every  other 
child.  It  does  not  follow  that  just  that 
form  of  the  discipline  of  consequences 
which  proved  so  effective  in  the  moral 
training  of  a  calm,  obstinate,  consider- 
ate, watchful,  outward-looking,  cheer- 
fully inquiring,  dispassionate,  kindly, 
but  essentially  cool  nature,  such  as 
was  that  of  the  young  Spencer,  will 
serve  for  every  other  variety  of  human 
creature.  Spencer,  as  a  boy,  was  a 
very  normal  human  being  of  his  own 
type.  And  if  all  children  were  of  his 
169 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

type,  the  problem  of  education  would 
indeed  be  simplified;  yet  the  result 
would  hardly  be  such  as  would  add  to 
the  gayety  of  nations,  to  the  poetry  of 
life,  or  even  to  the  practical  effective- 
ness of  the  race.  For  my  own  part,  as 
I  read  the  "  Autobiography,"  I  come 
to  admire  and  to  enjoy  Spencer  as 
never  before.  I  would  not  have  him 
a  different  personality  for  the  sake  of 
any  man's  theories  or  methods.  He 
was  of  his  own  kind  a  most  wonderful 
example.  But  I  should  be  sorry  if  all 
men  were  Spencers. 

Herbert  Spencer  was  born  in  1820,  — 
the  first  child,  and  the  only  child  of  the 
family  to  reach  maturity.  His  parents 
were  a  highly  intellectual  father  and 
a  very  gentle,  kindly,  and  unaggressive 
mother.  The  father  was  a  teacher, 
carrying  on  a  school  and  also  taking 
private  pupils,  until  ill  health  led  to  his 
abandoning  this  occupation.  He  was, 
160 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

except  for  some  defects  of  temper,  a 
very  noble  and  high-minded  man  of 
sensitive  constitution,  and  of  great  and 
conscientious  industry.  In  youth  he 
was  vigorous  and  active,  but  later  he 
was  for  years  a  sufferer  from  nervous 
irritability,  with  vexations  of  various 
sorts,  which  interfered  with  his  effec- 
tiveness, but  not  nearly  so  much  with 
his  intellectual  interests.  He  was  in- 
dependent in  spirit  and  practice,  pious, 
and  of  positive  religious  convictions, 
but  a  nonconformist  in  the  fullest 
sense, — nominally  for  years  a  Wes- 
leyan,  but  then  seceding  from  that 
body,  and  thereafter  making  little  of 
outward  religious  forms.  In  religions, 
as  in  other  matters,  as  Spencer  tells  us, 
"  my  father  advocated  self-help  and  in- 
dependent exploration,  rather  than  pas- 
sive recipience."  Spencer  the  father 
always  remained,  however,  a  believer 

in  what  he  took  to  be  genuine  Chris- 
11  161 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

tianity,  and  regretted  his  son's  later 
abandonment  of  supernaturalism.  The 
father  had  some  ability  as  an  inventor, 
and  what  his  son  describes  as  ''  artistic 
perception  joined  with  skill  of  hand." 

The  father  took  seriously,  from  the 
first,  his  office  as  his  son's  teacher; 
yet  equally,  from  the  first,  he  chose  a 
policy  involving  a  minimum  of  inter- 
ference and  a  maximum  of  freedom 
for  the  boy.  Of  Herbert  Spencer  him- 
self the  first  recorded  incident  of  any 
intellectual  importance  is  this,  which 
his  father  long  afterwards  wrote  down 
as  a  reminiscence:  "One  day,  when 
a  very  little  child,  I  noticed,"  says  the 
father,  "as  he  was  sitting  quietly  by 
the  fire-side,  a  sudden  titter.  On  say- 
ing, 'Herbert,  what  are  you  laughing 
atl '  he  said,  '  I  was  thinking  how  it 
would  have  been  if  there  had  been 
nothing  besides  myself.'  "  This,  I  may 
say,  seems  to  have  been  Spencer's  only 
162 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

excursion  into  Idealism.  WTien  Her- 
bert Spencer  was  seven  years  old,  his 
parents  moved  to  a  house  in  the  out- 
skirts of  Derby,  where  the  boy's  child- 
hood was  passed.  His  training  began 
with  very  little  school  drill,  with  com- 
paratively little  active  control  on  the 
part  of  the  father,  and  with  much 
wandering  on  the  boy's  part  in  garden, 
fields,  and  woods,  together  with  a  good 
deal  of  fishing.  Before  long  the  boy's 
interest  in  natural  objects  took  intel- 
lectual form  in  a  collecting  interest 
in  entomology  —  an  interest  which  the 
father  encouraged.  Moths,  butterflies, 
dragonflies,  beetles,  were  extensively 
studied;  their  larvae  were  collected; 
drawings  were  made  of  them.  "  Initi- 
ated thus  naturally,"  says  Spencer,  "  I 
practised  drawing  all  through  boyhood 
to  a  greater  or  less  extent.  .  .  .  My 
father  disapproved  wholly  of  drawing 
from  copies."  Sketches  of  outdoor 
163 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

objects  of  various  sorts  followed.  And 
the  boy  was  led  over  to  making  models 
of  various  kinds.  Meanwhile,  like  other 
children,  Herbert  was,  as  he  says, 
"  extremely  prone  to  castle-building,  — 
a  habit  which  continued  throughout 
youth  and  into  mature  life.  ...  In 
early  days  the  habit  was  such,  that  on 
going  to  bed,  it  was  a  source  of  satis- 
faction to  me  to  think  I  should  be  able 
to  lie  for  a  length  of  time  and  dwell  on 
the  fancies  which  at  the  time  occupied 
me."  The  resulting  mental  habits  ran 
to  the  delightful  extremes  common 
enough  in  children  who  are  brought 
up  much  alone.  Novel-reading  erelong 
followed,  and  was  secretly  pursued  after 
the  boy  had  been  sent  to  bed,  although 
such  reading  was  of  course  against  the 
rule.  This  generally  outdoor  life,  and 
this  absence  of  forced  labor,  tended, 
as  Spencer  feels  sure,  to  establish  his 
health.  He  became  strong,  and  was  a 
164 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

good  runner.  With  his  playmates,  as 
far  as  he  had  them,  he  was  peaceable. 
But  from  an  early  age  he  had  a  marked 
"  disregard  of  authority,"  and  the  con- 
sequence, as  he  says,  was  "  chronic 
disobedience."  Not  that  his  conduct 
tended  to  active  viciousness,  but  that 
he  quietly  went  on  in  his  own  set  way. 
His  father  blamed  this  sort  of  behavior, 
but  did  not  vigorously  interfere  to  pre- 
vent it,  being  himself  too  sincere  a 
nonconformist  to  be  fond  of  coercion. 
Along  with  this  trait  went,  however, 
an  unwillingness  on  Herbert's  part  to 
domineer  over  other  boys,  a  love  of 
letting  other  people  have  their  liberty, 
and  an  aversion  to  any  form  of  cruelty 
to  animals,  except,  to  be  sure,  in  so 
far  as  the  beloved  fishing  involved  giv- 
ing pain  to  the  fish.  Even  this  form  of 
causing  pain  later  seemed  to  Spencer, 
in  his  youth,  intolerable,  and  he  then 
gave  up  fishing  for  years,  resuming  it 
165 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

only  as  a  refuge  in  his  later  invalidism. 
During  boyhood  Herbert  was  sent  by 
his  father  to  more  than  one  school ;  but 
the  father  remained  his  chief  teacher. 
Early  the  father  showed  the  boy  phys- 
ical experiments,  and  got  him  to  help 
in  performing  them,  taught  him,  by 
actual  experiments,  the  rudiments  of 
chemistry  and,  above  all,  encouraged 
him  in  independent  thinking.  Espe- 
cially prominent  was  the  father's  habit 
of  asking  the  boy,  "  What  is  the  cause?  " 
of  one  or  another  natural  phenomenon. 
The  boy  was  encouraged  to  puzzle  out 
such  matters  for  himself.  "  On  one 
occasion,"  says  Spencer,  "  my  father 
put  to  me  some  question  concerning 
the  cause  of  an  occurrence  named ;  and 
when,  after  a  pause,  I  gave  him  my  ex- 
planation, his  reply  was,  "  Yes,  people 
who  knew  nothing  about  it  would  think 
that  clever;  but  it  is  not  true."  Here- 
upon, however,  so  far  as  Spencer  re- 
166 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

ports  the  incident,  there  seems  to  be 
no  memory  of  any  further  explanation 
offered.     The  question  was  left  open. 

The  immediate  result  of  this  boy- 
hood training  is  summed  up  by  Spen- 
cer himself  in  a  remarkable  passage  of 
the  "Autobiography"  (I,  100):  — 

"  Here  let  me  sum  up  the  results  of  my  educa- 
tion thus  far —  that  is,  to  the  age  of  thirteen. 

"I  knew  nothing  worth  mentioning  of  Latin  or 
Greek:  my  acquaintance  with  Latin  being  limited 
to  ability  to  repeat  very  imperfectly  the  declensions 
and  a  part  only  of  the  conjugations  (for  I  never  got 
all  through  them) ;  and  my  acquaintance  with  Greek 
being  such  only  as  was  acquired  in  the  course  of 
word  for  word  translation,  under  my  uncle  Wil- 
liam's guidance,  of  the  first  chapters  of  the  Greek 
Testament.  Moreover  I  was  wholly  uninstructed 
in  English  —  using  the  name  in  a  technical  sense : 
not  a  word  of  English  grammar  had  ever  been 
learned  by  me,  not  a  lesson  in  composition.  I  had 
merely  the  ordinary  knowledge  of  arithmetic ;  and 
beyond  that  no  knowledge  of  mathematics.  Of 
English  history  nothing  ;  of  ancient  history  a  little  ; 
of  ancient  literature  in  translation  nothing ;  of  biog- 
raphy nothing.  Concerning  things  around,  how- 
ever, and  their  properties,  I  knew  a  good  deal 
167 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

more  than  is  known  by  most  boys.  My  conceptions 
of  physical  principles  and  processes  had  consider- 
able clearness ;  and  I  had  a  fair  acquaintance  with 
sundry  special  phenomena  in  physics  and  chemistry. 
I  had  also  acquired,  both  by  personal  observation 
and  by  reading,  some  knowledge  of  animal  life, 
and  especially  of  insect  life ;  but  no  knowledge  of 
botany,  either  popular  or  systematic.  By  miscel- 
laneous reading  a  little  mechanical,  medical,  ana- 
tomical, and  physiological  information  had  been 
gained;  as  also  a  good  deal  of  information  about 
various  parts  of  the  world  and  their  inhabitants. 
Such  were  the  acquisitions  which  formed  a  set-off 
against  the  ignorance  of  those  things  commonly 
learned  by  boys. 

"Something  remains  to  be  named,  however.  I 
refer  to  the  benefit  derived  from  an  unusual  mental 
discipline.  My  father's  method,  as  already  inti- 
mated, was  that  of  self-help  carried  out  in  all  direc- 
tions. Beyond  such  self-help  as  I  have  already 
exemplified,  there  was  always  a  prompting  to  intel- 
lectual self-help.  A  constant  question  with  him 
was,  — '  I  wonder  what  is  the  cause  of  so-and-so,' 
or  again,  putting  it  directly  to  me,  —  '  can  you  tell 
the  cause  of  this?'  Always  the  tendency  in  himself, 
and  the  tendency  strengthened  in  me,  was  to  regard 
everything  as  naturally  caused ;  and  I  doubt  not 
that  while  the  notion  of  causation  was  thus  ren- 
dered much  more  definite  in  me  than  in  most  of  my 

168 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

age,  there  was  established  a  habit  of  seeking  for 
causes,  as  well  as  a  tacit  belief  ia  the  universality 
of  causation.  Along  with  this  there  went  absence 
of  all  suggestion  of  the  miracalous.  I  do  not 
remember  my  father  ever  referring  to  anything  as 
explicable  by  supernatural  agency.  I  presume  from 
other  evidence  that  he  must  at  that  time  have  still 
accepted  the  current  belief  in  miracles ;  but  I  never 
perceived  any  trace  of  it  in  his  conversation.  Cer- 
tainly, his  remarks  about  the  surrounding  world 
gave  no  sign  of  any  other  thought  than  that  of 
uniform  natural  law. 

"Let  me  add  that  there  was  on  his  part  no 
appeal  to  authority  as  a  reason  for  accepting  a 
belief.  That  same  independence  of  judgment,  which 
he  had  himself,  he  tended,  alike  intentionally  and 
unintentionally,  to  foster  in  others ;  and  in  me  he 
did  it  very  effectually,  whether  with  purpose  or  not. 
Doubtless  it  existed  innately ;  but  his  discipline 
strengthened  it." 

The  next  stage  of  Spencer's  training 
was  begun  when  he  was  sent  to  take 
lessons  with  his  uncle  at  Hinton,  near 
Bath.  Of  the  resulting  rebellion  of  the 
boy  at  his  uncle's  somewhat  stricter 
discipline,  and  of  his  flight  from  his 
uncle's  house,  and  return  home,  under 
169 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

conditions  which  involved  great  tem- 
porary hardship,  the  "Autobiography  " 
tells  in  its  Chapter  III.  He  walked 
decidedly  over  one  hundred  miles  in 
three  days,  alone,  with  no  sleep  and 
almost  nothing  to  eat,  and  appeared  at 
home  in  a  state  of  great  exhaustion,  to 
the  alarm  of  his  parents.  One  sees 
how,  as  a  result  of  this  incident,  Spen- 
cer did  indeed  experience  the  disci- 
pline of  consequences  in  a  case  where 
his  own  quiet  obstinacy  brought  him 
for  the  first  time  into  a  larger  con- 
flict with  authority.  Plainly,  being  the 
boy  he  was,  the  incident  of  his  flight, 
of  his  long  walk  home,  and  his  ex- 
haustion by  the  way  and  subsequent 
temporary  prostration,  taught  him  an 
important  lesson,  without  notably  al- 
tering his  attitude  towards  authority. 
Later  he  returned  to  Hinton,  and  re- 
mained there  with  much  more  docility, 

but  still  with  the  same  characteristic 
170 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

independence  of  mind  and  interest, 
until  he  was  sixteen  years  old.  In 
1837,  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  Spencer 
entered  the  office  of  the  resident  engi- 
neer of  the  London  and  Birmingham 
Railway  to  learn,  by  actual  work  on 
the  road,  the  calling  of  a  civil  engineer. 
Herewith  his  boyhood  training  ends,  and 
his  transition  to  the  work  of  life  begins. 
The  principal  motives  which  deter- 
mined Spencer's  early  education  are 
now  before  us.  We  see  the  truth  of 
what  he  himself  remarks  in  the  "Auto- 
biography," viz.,  that  his  father's  plan 
for  his  early  mental  guidance  was  the 
basis  upon  which  rested  Spencer's  later 
views  as  to  educational  method,  while 
the  concrete  and  extremely  practical 
training  in  science  to  which  he  was 
subjected  in  his  later  boyhood,  and 
during  his  apprenticeship  as  engineer, 
gave  him  his  view  as  to  what  knowl- 
edge is  of  most  worth. 
171 


Ill 


ALREADY,  in  the  foregoing  sketch, 
I  have  indicated  the  direction 
in  which  lie  the  criticisms  that 
I  should  venture  to  suggest  regarding 
Spencer's  educational  theories. 

First  and  most  notable  is  the  criti- 
cism of  the  facts  themselves.  Spencer's 
educational  theory  is  a  generalization 
from  the  experience  of  a  single  indi- 
vidual. This  generalization  is  sup- 
ported by  arguments  whose  genuine 
value,  as  true  indications  of  how  the 
education  of  men  in  general  should  be 
guided,  I  do  not  question,  so  long  as 
you  recognize  that  these  arguments 
refer  to  certain  aspects  only  of  human 
life,  and  to  certain  problems  only  of 
human  training.  These  aspects  and 
172 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

problems  are  indeed  important.  That 
the  sciences  must  occupy  an  important 
part,  henceforth,  in  the  curriculum,  we 
all  now  recognize.  Spencer's  plea  for 
individualism  in  education,  his  respect 
for  the  rights  and  the  interests  of  the 
individual  child,  is  also  deeply  and 
permanently  significant.  But  the  true 
lesson  of  Spencer's  experience  is,  as  I 
have  said,  wider  than  he  himself  rec- 
ognizes. The  principle  which  he  il- 
lustrates is  the  principle  that  each 
individual  deserves  to  have  his  own 
chance  for  sound  training.  But  for 
that  very  reason  people  who  are  not 
of  Spencer's  type  may  need  a  training 
widely  different  from  that  of  Spencer. 

Secondly,  however,  as  to  the  educa- 
tional principles  which  I  should  be 
disposed  to  oppose  to  Spencer's  prin- 
ciples, they  are  these.  The  purpose  of 
training  a  man  is,  on  the  whole  this: 
We  want  to  fit  him  to  take  a  definite 
173 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

place,  as  an  individual,  in  human  so- 
ciety. Now  an  individual  man  needs, 
not  only  a  generalized  knowledge  of 
the  laws  of  the  physical  world  and  of 
human  nature,  but  an  interest  in  and 
a  power  to  co-operate  with  individual 
human  beings.  The  limitation  of  any 
form  of  scientific  training  is  that,  how- 
ever carefully  it  may  be  founded  upon 
the  observation  of  facts,  it  terminates 
in  a  knowledge  of  general  principles. 
Now  general  principles,  as  such,  refer 
to  the  laws  of  things,  and  not  to  indi- 
vidual truths.  But  in  real  life  we 
have  to  deal  with  the  individual  man, 
with  this,  friend  or  neighbor,  with  the 
personal  duty,  with  the  appreciation 
of  this  task,  this  human  affection,  this 
work  of  art,  this  relation  to  humanity 
or  to  Grod.  Hence  the  place  in  human 
training  which  is  occupied  by  whatever 
helps    us,    not  merely  to   understand 

psychology,  but  to  love  our  neighbor; 
174 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

not  merely  to  comprehend  sociological 
principles,  but  to  be  loyal  to  this  com- 
munity; not  merely  to  be  abstract 
critics  of  art  but  to  enjoy  this  poem, 
or  this  song,  to  admire  this  hero,  to 
estimate  this  personal  character,  to 
bear  this  personal  burden,  to  endure 
this  affliction,  to  be  patient  under  this 
trial.  Now  one  great  purpose  of  the 
humanities  in  education  is  to  open  our 
eyes  to  truths  which  cannot  be  ex- 
pressed in  abstract  form,  but  which 
can  only  be  appreciated  through  a  di- 
rect enjoyment  of  human  life,  as  it  gets 
portrayed  in  history,  in  literature,  and 
in  art. 

Where,  as  in  Spencer's  own  case, 
just  such  training  was,  in  large  part, 
from  the  very  nature  of  the  man  him- 
self, unassimilable,  the  result  is  one 
which  our  philosopher's  "  Autobiog- 
raphy ' '  now  emphasizes  with  classic 
perfection.  A  lover  of  humanity  in 
175 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

the  abstract,  Spencer  was  peculiarly 
destitute  of  any  large  power  to  appre- 
ciate individuals.  He  was,  of  course, 
not  wholly  destitute  of  this  power. 
How  could  a  man  of  his  calibre  have 
failed  altogether  of  this  common  privi- 
lege of  mankind!  But  he  certainly 
was  not  what  he  would  have  been  had 
his  nature  been  fitted  for  a  higher 
education  in  the  appreciation  of  indi- 
viduality, and  had  he  then  received 
such  education.  In  his  "  Autobiogra- 
phy "  a  few  of  his  friends  appear  to 
have  been  to  him  very  genuine  individ- 
uals ;  and  to  them  he  was  nobly  loyal. 
So  it  was  with  his  father,  and,  to  a  less 
degree,  with  John  Stuart  Mill,  with 
Huxley,  with  Greorge  Eliot.  But  Spen- 
cer's hopeless  inability  to  understand 
his  critics,  to  enter  into  profitable  con- 
troversy, to  read  an  author  with  whose 
principles  he  felt  any  decided  disagree- 
ment, to  learn  from  his  fellows  in  any 
176 


HERBERT     SPENCER 


adequate  measure,  —  all  this  was  the  re- 
sult of  the  temperament  which  limited 
him  to  studies  such  as  dealt  mainly  in 
generalities.  This  was  why  history, 
which  deals  so  largely  with  the  indi- 
vidual, was  in  such  a  vast  range  of  its 
human  interest  a  sealed  book  to  him. 
It  would  be  sad  indeed  if  all  other 
men  could  be  reduced  through  any 
system  of  training  to  the  same  degree 
of  poverty  in  their  appreciation  of 
individuality. 

Thirdly,  to  repeat  an  objection  which 
has  often  been  made,  Spencer,  in  his 
essay  upon  ' '  What  knowledge  is  most 
worth,"  obviously  speaks  as  if  he  failed 
to  distinguish  between  the  technical 
worth  which  an  applied  science  has  for 
any  of  the  tasks  of  humanity,  and  the 
personal  worth  which  the  same  science 
may  have  for  the  student  who  can 
never  get  the  expertness  needed  in 
order  to  apply  his  knowledge.  Chem- 
12  177 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

istry  is  needed  in  a  thousand  arts ;  but 
how  far  will  the  boy  who  performs  ele- 
mentary chemical  experiments  thereby 
get  on  the  way  towards  becoming  a 
chemical  technologist!  The  value 
which  the  elementary  study  of  chem- 
istry has  for  a  particular  boy  may  be 
very  great  indeed;  but  you  cannot 
measure  that  value  by  laying  stress 
upon  the  importance  of  the  applica- 
tions of  chemistry  in  the  arts.  For 
the  successfully  studious  boy  himself 
the  value  of  this  science,  so  far  as  his 
early  work  goes,  will  lie  rather  in  the 
orderly  habits  of  observation,  of  think- 
ing, of  conduct,  and  of  self-criticism 
which  he  acquires,  and  also,  very 
largely,  in  the  intrinsic  interest  and 
beauty  of  the  knowledge  of  natural 
law  which  he  gets  as  he  works.  But 
just  such  power  and  life  he  might  also 
gain  from  quite  different  studies,  were 
they  equally  well  pursued.  You  there- 
178 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

fore  cannot  judge  the  value  of  his  men- 
tal processes  by  insisting  that,  without 
chemistry,  the  arts  of  modern  life 
would  cease.  Yet  when  Spencer  tells 
us  that  our  life  depends  upon  natural 
conditions,  and  that  therefore  we  must 
study  nature,  in  order  to  win  control 
of  the  arts  of  self-preservation,  he 
surely  seems  to  confound  the  possible 
technological  value  of  an  applied  sci- 
ence with  the  value  of  the  rudiments 
of  that  science  to  the  learner.  The 
tyro  acquires  elementary  learning  for 
the  sake  of  what  it  can  rightly  mean 
to  him.  Only  the  expert  wisely  ap- 
plies his  knowledge;  and  the  expert, 
in  the  modern  world,  comes  to  be 
farther  and  farther  removed  from 
the  tyro.  The  result  is  well  seen  in 
the  case  of  physiological  knowledge. 
Practical  instruction  in  hygiene,  with 
enough  elementary  physiology  to  make 
that  instruction  living,  is  indeed  highly 
179 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

valuable  in  its  place.  But  how  limited 
that  place  at  best  is,  in  view  of  the 
problems  which  the  care  of  health,  not 
only  in  one's  own  case,  but  in  the  case 
of  one's  family  and  dependents,  soon 
brings  to  the  mature  man!  When 
these  harder  problems  arise,  our  rudi- 
mentary physiology  may  prove  merely 
mischievous,  unless  we  know  when  to 
consult  experts.  Spencer  himself,  in 
view  of  his  obstinate  self-confidence, 
would  probably  have  done  better  as 
an  invalid  if  he  had  had  less  of  the 
physiological  knowledge  which  he  mis- 
used in  diagnosing,  and  probably  too 
in  treating,  his  malady.  The  lesson  is 
that  the  young  learner,  whatever  he  is 
to  gain  from  science,  must  certainly 
not  be  encouraged  to  regard  his  first 
crude  generalizations  as  in  themselves 
constituting  the  acquisition  of  a  mas- 
tery over  the  arts  of  living.     If  he  does 

so  regard  them,  he  may  acquire  Spen- 
180 


HERBERT     SPENCER 


cer's  own  incapacity  for  taking  advice 
when  he  might  wisely  do  so.  One 
good  result  of  elementary  study,  if  it  is 
rightly  guided,  ought  to  be  a  high  regard 
for  expert  opinion,  —  a  regard  which 
Spencer  always  lacked.  As  his  work  in 
his  generation  depended  upon  lacking 
such  regard,  we  ourselves  may  rejoice, 
in  his  case,  in  the  result ;  but  may  we 
escape  the  fate  of  having  all  children 
brought  up  in  like  fashion! 

The  worth  of  elementary  science  for 
the  learner  cannot  be  measured,  then, 
in  terms  of  the  worth  of  applied  science 
for  the  arts;  and  in  so  far  as  Spencer 
reasons  as  if  this  were  possible,  his 
argument  is  idle.  To  say  this  is  in  no 
wise  to  belittle  the  true  value  of  ele- 
mentary training  in  natural  science,  — 
a  value  which  is  nowadays,  for  the  most 
part,  quite  otherwise  estimated. 

Finally,   as    to    the    moral  training 

through    the    "  discipline   of    conse- 
181 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

quences,"  Spencer  himself,  in  his  fre- 
quent reflections  in  later  years,  upon 
the  unteachableness  of  most  men  re- 
garding very  notable  personal  and  social 
ills  and  evil  tendencies,  has  furnished 
sufficient  ground  for  making  us  see  the 
limitations  of  that  method.  There  are 
certain  things  which  we  learn  best 
through  reflecting  upon  the  conse- 
quences of  our  own  deeds.  The  privi- 
lege of  making  our  own  blunders,  and 
of  learning  thereby,  is,  in  respect  of 
such  matters,  very  precious.  But  there 
are  other  respects  in  which  we  learn 
best  through  imitation,  obedience,  and 
whatever  else  does  not  leave  us  to  our- 
selves, but  wisely  informs  us  with  tend- 
encies to  action  which  we  could  never 
have  invented  if  left  to  ourselves.  In 
general,  loyalty — the  essence  of  orderly 
social  morality  —  is  in  most  of  us,  in 
case  we  attain  to  loyalty  at  all,  the  re- 
sult rather  of  an  early  "  heteronomy  " 
182 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

of  the  will,  which  can  only  later  reach 
"  autonomy."  The  young  Spencer's 
cool  obstinacy  and  quiet  good  nature 
are  not  the  heritage  oi  every  child. 
And  yet  there  are  some  leaders  of  men 
who,  with  other  moral  training  than 
his,  have  attained,  after  all,  to  much 
loftier  ideals  than  he  ever  knew.  He 
avoided  anarchism  of  all  sorts.  But 
the  "  discipline  of  consequences  "  never 
made  him  exactly  a  hero,  or  a  saint. 

Let  us  honor  him  for  what  he  was. 
But  let  us  be  glad  that  he  is  not  the 
trainer  of  our  children. 


183 


REMINISCENCES 

OF 

HERBERT     SPENCER 


REMINISCENCES 

OF 

HERBERT    SPENCER 


CARLYLE,  the  most  graphic  of 
literary  portrait  painters,  has 
somewhere  observed  that  he 
never  could  thoroughly  understand  the 
character  of  a  man  till  he  had  seen  some 
kind  of  a  portrait  of  him.  Herbert 
Spencer  was  no  recluse.  For  many 
years  he  might  daily  have  been  noticed 
walking  in  the  parks  and  on  the  streets 
of  the  west  end  of  London.  He  was 
a  familiar  figure  in  certain  sections  of 
London  society.  And  he  might  not 
unfrequently  have  been  observed  at 
theatres,  in  concert  halls,  or  (much  more 

rarely)  at  public  gatherings. 

187 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

He  was  above  the  average  height,  — 
about  five  feet  nine  or  ten, — and  had  not 
the  upright,  unbending,  and  yet  elastic 
carriage  of  a  Glladstone,  but  rather  an 
easy,  good-natured  swing,  which  an- 
swered well  to  his  character,  though 
that  too  was  unyielding  in  matters  of 
principle.  The  head  was  large,  remind- 
ing one  of  Gladstone,  Carlyle,  and  Owen, 
and  the  forehead  was  broad,  but  not  as 
high  as  one  would  expect  in  a  great 
philosopher.  His  hair  was  black,  but 
his  light-blue  eyes  entitled  him  to  be 
called  a  blonde.  The  nose  was  aqui- 
line and  strong;  the  upper  lip  (in- 
herited from  his  mother)  was  long  and 
gave  his  face  an  expression  at  once  of 
honesty  and  also  of  a  certain  common- 
placeness  that  overlay  his  originality. 
The  passionless  thin  lips  told  of  a  total 
absence  of  sensuality,  and  the  light 
eyes    betrayed    a    lack    of    emotional 

depth.     Neither  the  chin  nor  the  lower 

188 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

jaw  revealed  exceptional  strength ;  and, 
in  fact,  though  he  showed  no  want  of 
firmness  in  life,  and  never  yielded  in 
any  struggle,  he  possessed  none  of  the 
dubious  qualities  so  often  associated 
with  an  abnormal  development  of  the 
jaw  and  the  muscles  of  the  neck.  The 
tinge  of  color  on  the  cheek  bones 
spoke  of  an  incorruptness  of  nature; 
and  be  it  noted  in  passing  that  he  paled 
when  he  was  angry,  as  formidable  men 
are  said  to  do. 

In  all  probability  he  inherited  (so  far 
as  he  did  inherit)  his  originality  from 
his  father,  who  was  the  author  of  an 
esteemed  work  on  "  Inventional  Greom- 
etry,"  and  also  of  a  new  system  of  short- 
hand. W.  G-.  Spencer  was  remarkable 
for  his  inventiveness  in  small  contriv- 
ances ;  indeed,  according  to  his  sou,  he 
wholly  devoted  himself  to  such  things 
in  his  later  years  and  let  larger  matters 
go  by  the  board.  The  son  inherited  his 
189 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

father's  inventiveness  (though  he  would 
not  admit  it),  and  he  abounded  in  me- 
chanical devices ;  but  he  never  sacrificed 
principles  to  details.  From  the  same 
source  the  author  of  "Social  Statics" 
derived  the  stuff  that  goes  to  make  a 
rebel  in  a  good  sense,  which  was  the 
basis  of  his  character.  The  father  is 
described  in  the  Rev.  T.  Mozley's 
"Reminiscences"  in  a  passage  that 
was  shown  to  a  colonial  Premier.  "  A 
nonconformist!  "  he  exclaimed  when 
he  had  read  it.  Spencer  was  a  noncon- 
formist in  the  widest  sense  to  the  end 
of  his  days.  He  was  against  govern- 
ment of  all  sorts,  because  he  was  him- 
self fully  self-governed  and  habitually 
self-sufficing.  He  long  acted  on  the 
principles  expounded  in  his  "  Manners 
and  Fashions."  He  at  first  went  out 
to  dinner  in  a  frock  coat,  which  he  at 
length  discarded  in  favor  of  a  swallow- 
tail, but  he  always  refused  to  wear  a 
190 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

white  necktie;  those  who  had  invited 
him,  he  said,  must  take  him  as  he  chose 
to  come.  When  the  Czar  Alexander  II. 
visited  London,  he  expressed  to  Lord 
Derby,  then  Foreign  Minister,  a  wish 
to  meet  the  most  distinguished  savants. 
Lady  Derby  accordingly  invited,  among 
others,  Spencer,  Huxley,  and  Tyndall. 
Each  dealt  with  the  invitation  in  a 
characteristic  manner.  Huxley  con- 
sidered that,  as  a  representative  of 
scientific  societies,  he  might  properly 
appear  in  the  regulation  costume ;  Tyn- 
dall went  in  ordinary  evening  dress, 
and  was  said  to  have  looked  extremely 
uncomfortable;  while  Spencer  at  first 
declined  to  go  on  the  pretext  that  he 
had  no  court  dress,  and  when  Lady 
Derby  hoped  that  he  would  come 
dressed  as  he  liked,  he  decided  not  to 
go  at  all. 

From  his  father  the  young  Herbert 

Spencer  received  virtually  the  whole 
191 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

of  his  education.  An  American  cor- 
respondent elicited  from  W.  G.  Spencer 
some  particulars  of  his  method.  It  was 
the  method  afterwards  recommended 
by  the  author  of  "  Education :  Intel- 
lectual, Moral,  and  Physical."  His  son 
was  taught  from  objects,  not  from 
books.  His  first  lessons  were  on  the 
laws  and  properties  of  external  things. 
He  was  not  allowed  to  open  a  book  on 
any  subject  that  was  to  be  studied  until 
he  had  been  taught  its  principles  by 
oral  and  ocular  demonstration.  He 
had  then  no  errors  to  unlearn,  and  he 
was  made  to  see  things  as  they  were,  not 
through  a  mist  of  words.  It  is  further 
stated  that  young  Spencer  passed  sev- 
eral years  under  the  roof  of  his  uncle, 
who  was  an  Anglican  incumbent  near 
Bath.  What  he  learned  from  the  Rev. 
Thomas  Spencer  it  is  difficult  to  dis- 
cover.    He  had  the  "  little  Latin  and 

less    Greek "    of    the    dramatist,    and 
192 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

he  always  derided  classical  learning. 
His  introductory  chapter  on  education 
makes  light  of  it,  and  his  essay  on  style 
has  an  unflattering  comparison  (pur- 
posely barbed,  as  he  afterwards  ad- 
mitted) between  the  ghost  stories  that 
fill  a  servant  girl's  head  and  the  an- 
cient myths  that  fill  a  modern  classic's. 
Where  he  picked  up  his  own  highly 
Latinized  style  it  is  not  easy  to  make 
out.  The  uncle  was  no  pedant,  but  a 
man  of  liberal  sympathies  and  phil- 
anthropic activities.  Spencer's  edu- 
cation, in  so  far  as  it  was  received 
from  others,  must  have  stopped  short 
at  the  time  when  he  left  his  father's 
instruction. 

His  objective  and  mathematical  edu- 
cation largely  determined  his  adoption 
of  the  profession  of  a  civil  engineer. 
He  had  a  pronounced  contempt  for 
one-sided  capacities,  and  he  thought 
that  an  able  man  should  be  capable  of 
13  193 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

doing  anything.  He  would  himself 
have  been  distinguished  in  almost  any 
pursuit.  He  had  an  inexhaustible  fac- 
ulty of  developing,  a  priori  and  a 
posteriori,  inductive  and  deductive  ar- 
guments in  support  of  any  imaginable 
proposition,  and  as  a  nisi  prius  advocate 
he  would  have  been  unapproachable. 
He  might  have  been  a  professional  in- 
ventor and  anticipated  Edison.  His 
water  colors  showed  a  promising  ar- 
tistic gift,  and  having  a  bass  voice  of 
good  timbre,  he  sang  in  part-music. 
From  the  last-named  accomplishment 
it  may  be  inferred  that  his  striking  essay 
on  "  The  Origin  and  Function  of  Music" 
was  no  accident,  nor  was  it  (as  Emer- 
son ungenerously  and  untruly  said  of 
all  his  writings)  the  work  of  a  "  stock- 
writer  who  could  write  equally  well  on 
all  subjects." 

A  local   circumstance    strengthened 
his  determination  for  engineering  and 
194 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

gave  it  a  specific  direction.  Derby  was 
then,  as  now,  the  headquarters  of  the 
Midland  Railway,  and  it  was  rather  to 
the  mechanical  branch  of  his  profession 
that  he  applied  himself.  A  pamphlet 
on  the  great  gauge  controversy  brought 
him  into  notice.  But  he  was  one  of 
Nature's  engineers.  His  constructive 
faculties  were  of  the  first  order.  He 
surveyed  a  science  as  a  geologist  sur- 
veys the  lie  of  a  country.  He  laid  out 
a  subject  like  a  surveyor.  His  argu- 
ments have  the  effect  of  a  mathematical 
demonstration,  and  yet  they  build  up  a 
structure  imposing  by  its  symmetry. 
He  once  had  occasion  to  draw  up  a 
model  of  the  analytical  treatment  of  a 
department  of  Sociology.  He  chose 
the  Ecclesiastical,  and  in  a  few  minutes 
he  tabulated  all  the  ramifications  of  the 
subject  in  a  manner  that  even  he  could 
hardly  have  improved  upon.  Mill  says 
that  Bentham's  disciples  learned  from 
195 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

the  master  the  art  of  breaking  up  a 
subject  into  its  constituent  parts. 
Spencer's  assistants  learned  from  him 
the  more  difficult  art  of  building  up 
the  disintegrated  elements  into  an 
organic  whole. 

His  Call 

But  he  had  a  still  more  imperious 
vocation.  His  father's  and  his  uncle's 
examples  (had  examples  been  needed) 
pointed  him  to  authorship,  and  while 
he  was  still  an  engineer  he  published 
several  papers  in  the  "  Civil  Engineer's 
Journal."  A  series  on  "  The  Proper 
Sphere  of  Grovernment"  more  plainly 
revealed  his  true  calling  and  attracted 
the  notice  of  James  Wilson.  Men 
lately  living  remembered  the  hatter  of 
Hawick,  who  resembled  Socrates  in 
being  found  more  frequently  in  the 
market-place  than  in  his  shop.  Pass- 
ing through  Hawick  in  1867,  Disraeli 
196 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

described  him  to  the  delighted  Hawick- 
ites  as  "a  very  remarkable  man." 
He  was  sufficiently  remarkable  to  get 
himself  elected  a  member  of  Parlia- 
ment, where  his  financial  capacity  was 
so  conspicuous  that  he  was  appointed 
a  member  of  the  Council  of  the  Gov- 
ernor-General of  India.  In  1848  he 
was  proprietor  and  editor  of  the  "  Econ- 
omist," and  on  that  now  eminent  weekly 
Spencer  served  as  sub-editor  for  fully 
three  years,  from  1848  to  1852.  He 
had  already  decided  to  abandon  his 
over-crowded  profession  and  (as  he 
mentioned  to  myself)  was  on  the  point 
of  emigrating  to  the  land  of  promise 
in  New  Zealand,  where,  like  Alfred 
Domett,  Browning's  "Waring,"  who 
emigrated  in  those  years,  he  might 
have  risen  to  reputation  as  a  Philo- 
Maori  Premier.  The  small  new  ap- 
pointment kept  him  in  England  and 
not  only  settled  his  future,  but  (may 
197 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

we  not  say?)  determined  the  future  of 
English  philosophy.  While  he  was 
sub-editor  of  the  "Economist"  he 
composed  "Social  Statics."  "Social 
Statics ' '  led  to  his  being  invited  to 
contribute  to  the  new  "Westminster 
Review,"  for  eight  or  ten  years  one  of 
the  most  brilliant  periodicals  ever  pub- 
lished. James  Wilson,  then  the  editor 
of  this  review,  did  not  make  Spencer 
a  philosopher,  but  he  made  his  career 
as  a  philosopher  practicable. 

His  Health 

Spencer  had  one  qualification  that 
has  sometimes  been  thought  indispen- 
sable for  a  literary  career  or,  at  least,  an 
inevitable  accompaniment  of  it.  Like 
Carlyle,  Comte,  Mill,  and  Darwin,  he 
was  a  life-long  valetudinarian.  He  was 
the  only  surviving  child  of  his  parents, 
and  he  was  long  so  delicate  that  they 
had  little  hope  of  rearing  him.  Con- 
198 


HERBERT     SPENCER 


stitutional  feebleness  may  have  predis- 
posed him  to  "break  down,"  as  he 
always  phrased  it,  in  his  thirty-sixth 
year.  Yet  every  day  hundreds  who 
have  no  constitutional  infirmity  break 
down  as  he  did.  The  collapse  may  be 
due  to  a  variety  of  causes  —  overwork 
or  overstrain,  excitement,  disappoint- 
ment or  grief,  a  poor  diet,  or  disease 
(such  as  pleurisy)  in  combination  with 
any  of  these.  Spencer  always  asserted 
that  his  own  breakdown  was  not  due 
to  overwork.  His  account  of  the  mat- 
ter was  that,  living  alone  in  lodgings 
in  1855,  being  a  member  of  no  club, 
and  having  few  acquaintances,  he  grew 
to  be  so  preoccupied  with  the  task  he 
had  then  in  hand  as  to  be  unable  to 
shake  it  off.  It  rose  with  him  in  the 
morning;  it  walked  about  with  him; 
worst  of  all,  it  went  to  bed  with  him. 
If  we  remember  that  that  task  was  the 
building  up  of  a  new  science  of  psy- 
199 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

chology,  not  on  the  old  foundations, 
but  drawn  almost  wholly  from  his  own 
entrails,  so  to  speak,  we  shall  realize 
somewhat  of  its  engrossing  nature  and 
be  less  surprised  at  the  collapse. 

It  was  an  ordinary  case,  without  com- 
plications. Some  obscure  portion  of 
the  brain  —  probably  the  higher  cen- 
tres, concerned  in  ratiocination  and  re- 
flection —  had  been  overstrained  and 
had  given  way,  with  a  resulting  incur- 
able lesion.  At  no  time,  he  said,  had 
he  any  pains,  and  I  think  he  escaped 
most  of  the  more  disagreeable  symp- 
toms of  cerebral  congestion;  and 
though  he  suffered  all  along  from 
chronic  insomnia,  there  were  none  of 
the  "  horrors  of  the  night "  that  often 
accompany  nervous  derangement.  His 
pulse  was  either  slow  and  strong,  or  else 
quick  and  feeble.  "  Doctors,"  he  said, 
"  knew  nothing  about  it  "  ;  but  he  still 
consulted  them  at  times  and  took  their 
200 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

prescriptions,  though  from  both  theory 
and  personal  experience  he  must  have 
known  more  of  his  own  case  than  all 
of  them  together.  At  one  time  he  reg- 
ularly took  tonics,  and  he  was  always 
experimenting  with  new  ones;  but  I 
imagine  that,  with  most  others  in  like 
cases,  he  found  it  was  best  to  use  medi- 
cines only  in  emergencies. 

After  his  first  breakdown,  he  was  dis- 
abled for  a  whole  year  and  a  half.  None 
but  those  who  have  gone  through  a 
similar  experience  can  imagine  the 
misery  of  the  situation.  All  day  he 
wandered  about  aimlessly  in  town  or 
country,  unable  to  write,  unable  even 
to  read.  He  did  not  then  know  —  he 
can  hardly  have  dreamed,  and  none  of 
his  friends  imagined  —  what  a  career 
lay  before  him,  but  he  must  have  been 
conscious  of  possessing  powers  that 
would  carry  him  to  eminence.  And 
now  it  might  be  that  his  future  was 
201 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

completely  wrecked  in  the  wreck  of 
his  health.  Neither  then  nor  after- 
wards did  he  receive  much  sympathy. 
He  "  looked  well,"  was  physically  vig- 
orous, and  bore  no  visible  traces  of  the 
inward  ruin.  His  acquaintances  spoke 
of  his  disablement  with  a  smile.  But 
he  never  complained  and  patiently 
awaited  the  self -restoration  brought  so 
often  by  Nature,  which  is  by  no  means 
always  "  careless  of  the  single  life." 
His  faith  was  rewarded.  Grrowing  tired 
of  his  idleness,  he  resumed  work,  and 
to  his  joy  and  wonder  discovered,  as 
Greorge  Sand  found  with  her  eyes,  and 
others  have  found  with  their  heads, 
that  his  strength  had  insensibly  come 
back.  But  it  was  not  unimpaired. 
The  liability  to  break  down  remained, 
and  the  least  over-exertion  was  followed 
by  a  relapse.  He  then  threw  up  all 
his  engagements,  would  not  even  look 

at  a  book  or  read  a  letter,  and  hurried 
202 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

away  to  his  native  Derby,  to  Brighton, 
or  Timbridge  Wells.  There  he  wan- 
dered about,  feeling  thoroughly  bored, 
doing  nothing,  talking  gladly  with  any 
one  who  offered,  and  even  seeking 
chance  conversation  as  both  physically 
beneficial  and  as  a  means  of  escaping 
the  obsession  of  his  own  thoughts. 

In  a  few  weeks  he  came  back  to 
London,  if  not  thoroughly  recruited,  at 
least  fit  to  resume  work.  There  was 
then  no  delay  and  no  hitch.  Without 
visible  effort,  but  rather  with  the  eager- 
ness of  a  courser  that  had  been  reined 
in,  he  took  up  the  thread  of  his  thought 
at  the  point  where  he  had  dropped  it, 
and  the  keenest  eye  would  not  have 
discerned  any  breach  of  continuity.  It 
was  like  the  weaving  of  a  web  of  which 
the  warp  was  his  own  mental  tissue, 
while  the  weft  was  the  conscious  reflec- 
tion that  tossed  the  shuttle  from  side 
to  side.  When  did  he  prepare!  It 
203 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

might  perhaps  have  been  said  of  him, 
as  Sir  "Walter  Scott  said  of  himself, 
that  in  one  sense  he  was  never  occupied 
with  the  subject  in  hand  except  when 
he  was  actually  engaged  on  it,  and  in 
another  that  it  was  never  out  of  his 
mind.  His  practice  (as  may  be  judged 
from  an  advice  he  gave  to  another)  was 
to  break  into  a  little  run  whenever  he 
fell  into  a  train  of  thought;  but  this 
must  have  been  a  precaution  for  his 
ailing  times.  When  met  with  on  the 
street,  of  an  afternoon,  he  was  obviously 
reflecting.  Still  more  visibly  self-ab- 
sorbed was  he  when  seen  in  Kensington 
Grardens  (which  were  adjacent  both  to 
his  place  of  residence  and  to  his  work- 
room) between  nine  and  ten  in  the 
forenoon.  Evidently  the  stream  of 
thought  was  flowing  smoothly,  for  he 
had  always  a  cheerful  greeting  for  a 
passing    acquaintance.      He    complied 

with  Emerson's  test  of  the  geniality 
204 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

of  genius.  Very  different  was  Carlyle 
when  casually  encountered  in  Picca- 
dilly, the  face  lighted  up  and  the  eyes 
blazed,  the  now  rickety  body  staggering 
under  the  impetus  of  the  inward  vision, 
like  a  crazy  ship  driven  on  by  a  too 
powerful  engine.  When  one  thinks  of 
these  men  and  of  others  as  great,  or 
only  less  great — of  Gladstone  and  Lowe 
and  Salisbury,  of  George  Eliot  and 
Lewes,  of  Fitzjames  Stephen,  James 
Spedding,  and  Henry  Irving  —  one  is 
tempted  to  believe  that  no  small  part 
of  the  world's  best  thought  and  feeling 
is  conceived  or  generated  on  the  noisy 
streets  of  the  world's  metropolis. 

Whence  did  Spencer  derive  the  mate- 
rials for  the  vast  structure  which  he 
reared?  To  no  question  is  the  answer 
more  unsatisfactory.  Even  those  who 
were  in  daily  intercourse  with  him  for 
many  years  would  answer  with  hesi- 
tation. It  may  be  confidently  asserted 
205 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

that  lie  at  no  time  received  systematic 
instruction  in  any  branch  of  science. 
At  one  time,  indeed,  he  engaged  so 
ardently  in  the  study  of  microscopy 
that  he  impaired  his  eyesight,  and  be- 
fore he  was  fifty  he  wore  spectacles 
while  he  read ;  but  he  must  have  pur- 
sued this  study  under  his  own  direction. 
It  may  be  doubted  if  he  ever  attended 
a  course  of  scientific  lectures.  What 
is  more  surprising,  it  may  be  doubted 
if  he  ever  read  a  book  on  science  from 
end  to  end.  An  Edinburgh  philosophi- 
cal writer  of  rare  acumen  and  rarer 
humor  was  ridiculed  because  he  wrote 
books  on  philosophy  without  reading 
Hamilton's  Lectures.  Spencer  com- 
posed his  "Social  Statics,"  which  is  a 
book  on  ethics  as  well  as  on  politics, 
having  read  no  other  ethical  treatise 
than  an  old  and  now  forgotten  work  by 
one  Jonathan  Dymond,  which  he  was 
never  tired  of  citing,  not  quoting,  for 
206 


HERBERT     SPENCER 


even  this  book  he  probably  had  not 
read  through.  He  produced  an  original 
treatise  on  Psychology,  and  though  he 
had  "glanced"  (it  was  his  favorite 
word)  at  Reid  and  Hume,  he  had  pre- 
pared himself  by  reading  only  what  he 
called  "that  subtle  book,"  Hansel's 
"Prolegomena  Logicae."  Excepting 
Carpenter's  "Principles  of  Comparative 
Physiology,"  he  had  possibly  not  care- 
fully perused  a  single  book  on  Biology 
when  he  wrote  his  "  Principles  of  Bi- 
ology " ;  perhaps  it  will  be  considered 
an  error  and  a  misfortune  that  he  hardly 
read  even  the  "Origin  of  Species." 
He  composed  his  "  Principles  of  Soci- 
ology ' '  without  reading  Comte  or  Tylor, 
and  no  one  was  more  astonished  than 
he  when  Tylor  claimed  priority  in  orig- 
inating the  ghost  theory  on  which 
the  Spencerian  science  of  religion  is 
founded ;    "  Primitive    Culture  ' '    had 

stood  on  his  shelves  for  years,  but  had 
207 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

stood  unopened.  He  wrote  his  final 
treatise  on  ethics  without  reading  Mill, 
Kant,  Whewell,  or  any  of  the  recog- 
nized authorities  on  morals,  excepting 
portions  of  Sidgwick.  Where,  then, 
did  he  find  his  ideas,  and  above  all, 
whence  did  he  procure  his  facts!  He 
picked  up  most  of  his  facts.  Spending 
a  good  part  of  every  afternoon  at  the 
Athenaeum  Club,  he  ran  through  most 
of  the  periodicals,  reading  little  in  the 
way  of  disquisition,  but  lynx-eyed  for 
every  fact  that  was  grist  to  his  mill. 
Half  an  hour  thus  passed  was  lucrative, 
so  rapid  was  his  assimilation,  so  orderly 
his  mental  arrangement  of  his  acquisi- 
tions, and  so  tenacious  his  memory  for 
facts  that  he  could  connect  with  an 
idea;  for  isolated  details  or  for  mere 
words  his  memory  was  weak.  At  the 
same  institution  he  habitually  met  with 
all  the  leading  savants,  many  of  whom 

were  his  intimates.     From  these,  by  a 
208 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

happy  mixture  of  suggestion  and  ques- 
tioning, he  extracted  all  that  they  knew. 
At  home  he  pillaged  the  two  or  three 
critical  and  scientific  periodicals  he  took 
in.  His  assistants,  especially  Dr.  Dun- 
can and  Dr.  Scheppig,  supplied  him 
with  a  mass  of  sociological  materials. 
From  time  to  time  he  distributed  his 
cuttings  and  excerpts  in  the  various 
drawers  of  his  bureau,  which  were 
labelled,  respectively,  Astkogeny,  Ge- 
OGENY  (at  a  time  when  he  must  still 
have  hoped  to  overtake  the  treatment 
of  these  sciences),  Biology,  Psychol- 
ogy, Sociology,  and  Ethics.  Ethics, 
as  a  lady  remarked  who  saw  the  bureau, 
was  at  the  bottom,  but  the  ready  retort 
was  that  ethics  was  the  foundation  of 
them  all.  Lastly,  he  went  everywhere 
with  his  eyes  open.  A  walk,  an  excur- 
sion, a  ride  in  a  bus  or  a  train,  a  resi- 
dence in  the  country,  supplied  him  with 
fresh  facts.  One  of  his  most  substan- 
14  209 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

tial  essays — that  on  "  Specialized  Ad- 
ministration ' '  —  sets  OTit  with  a  wallet 
of  paradoxes  gathered  out  of  doors. 
He  was  no  dreamer ;  his  curiosity  was 
ever  awake,  and  he  was  continually 
directing  the  attention  of  his  companion 
to  some  notable  phenomenon,  obvious 
when  pointed  out,  but  until  then  seen 
by  his  eyes  alone. 

His  Ideas 

A  prepared  mind  assimilates  ideas 
more  easily  than  facts,  and  most  of 
Spencer's  ideas,  like  his  facts,  were 
picked  up.  He  was  at  no  time  a  great 
reader,  and  he  could  never  have  won 
Plato's  encomium  on  Aristotle.  As- 
suredly he  did  not  belong  to  the  class 
of  over-read  men,  such  as  Cudworth 
and  Huet,  Bishop  of  Avranches,  Sir 
William  Hamilton  and  Principal  Lee, 
Grervinus     and    Theodore      Parker  — 

"  Daniel  Lamberts  of  learning,"  as  he 
210 


HERBERT     SPENCER 


would  himself  have  said,  in  whom  an  in- 
cubus of  erudition  had  at  length  smoth- 
ered the  thinking  faculty.  Rather,  he 
belonged  to  the  more  select  class  of 
under-read  philosophers,  like  Descartes 
and  Hobbes,  Spinoza  and  Kant,  William 
George  Ward  and  Thomas  Hill  Green, 
in  whom  an  imperious  power  of  origi- 
nation makes  the  absorption  of  foreign 
ideas  as  impracticable  as  it  is  superflu- 
ous. A  long  list  of  obligations  to  his 
contemporaries  —  far  longer  than  he 
has  avowed  or  would  have  acknowl- 
edged —  can  be  sheeted  home  to  Spen- 
cer, but  they  were  acquired  by  the 
smallest  possible  expenditure  of  per- 
sonal labor.  He  owes  something  to 
Emerson,  and  he  had  perhaps  read  a 
dozen  pages  of  the  Sage  of  Concord. 
He  owes  much  more  to  Carlyle,  but 
he  had  never  read  fifty  pages  of  the 
Prophet    of    Chelsea.      The    sight    of 

Dickens's  library  astonished  and  almost 
211 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

pained  Lewes;  it  consisted  mainly  of 
presentation  copies.  Spencer's  library 
was  not  quite  as  poverty-stricken,  but 
it  was  wofully  deficient  in  the  class  of 
books  that  might  have  been  expected  to 
be  found  in  it.  There  was  not  a  single 
work  on  philosophy  other  than  those 
sent  to  him ;  if  I  rightly  remember,  no 
book  of  Hobbes,  Locke,  Reid,  Hume, 
Kant,  or  Hamilton.  There  were  even 
few  books  in  science;  there  were  no 
histories  or  biographies,  and  in  the  way 
of  pure  (or  impure)  literature  there 
was  only  a  much  prized  copy  of  "  Tris- 
tram Shandy."  It  might  be  supposed 
that  he  borrowed  books  from  circulat- 
ing libraries,  but  it  is  doubtful  if  he 
was  ever  connected  with  a  circulating 
library  till,  late  in  the  60' s,  he  joined 
the  London  Library  for  the  sake  of  his 
assistants.  And  even  then,  he  never, 
or  hardly  ever,  took  out  a  book.     In 

fact,  he  was  not  a  reader  at  all,  in  the 
212 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

ordinary  sense  of  the  word,  but  only  a 
gleaner.  He  did  not  "  tear  the  entrails 
out  of  books,"  like  Sir  William  Hamil- 
ton; he  left  them,  for  the  most  part, 
severely  alone. 

His  method  of  composition  has  been 
elsewhere  described  (by  the  present 
writer),  but  it  is  too  characteristic  to 
be  wholly  admitted.  His  earlier  books 
and  essays  were  all  written  with  his 
own  hand.  When  he  entered  on  the 
composition  of  his  system  in  1860,  he 
employed  an  amanuensis.  He  had  but 
one  object  in  so  doing  —  to  econo- 
mize his  strength.  The  beneficent 
typograph  (boon  of  all  invalids  and  per- 
haps first  used  in  England  by  a  chronic 
invalid  —  Professor  George  Darwin) 
had  not  been  invented,  and  he  found 
the  drudgery  of  quill-driving  disabling. 
The  earlier  part  of  "  First  Principles  " 
was  written  one  autumn  by  the  shores 
of  a  Highland  loch.  He  rowed  in  a 
213 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

boat  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour  to  make 
the  blood  flow  freely  through  the  brain, 
and  for  an  equal  space  he  dictated 
highly  finished  matter  that  came  as 
freely.  In  London,  when  he  was  cere- 
brail  y  shaken  but  physically  robust, 
he  preferred  to  go  to  a  racquet  court. 
One  of  his  most  abstruse  efforts  of  ra- 
tiocination —  the  admirable  exposition 
of  Transfigured  Realism  in  his  "  Prin- 
ciples of  Psychology ' '  —  was  dictated 
in  the  intervals  of  a  game  at  racquet  in 
a  court  at  Pentonville  in  the  north  of 
London.  He  remarked  at  the  time 
that  readers  would  be  surprised  to  see 
an  illustrative  woodcut  in  the  heart  of 
a  metaphysical  discussion ;  they  would 
have  been  still  more  surprised  had  they 
known  of  the  non-philosophical  sur- 
roundings amid  which  that  high  argu- 
ment was  elaborated. 

Mr.    Spencer    worked    through    the 
morning  in  his  rooms  at  2  Leinster 
214 


HERBERT     SPENCER 


Place,  Bayswater.  Arriving  punctually 
at  ten,  he  proceeded  to  despatch  his 
correspondence.  Tyndall  once  ex- 
pressed his  astonishment  at  constantly 
receiving  letters  from  perfect  strangers, 
requesting  to  be  informed  on  all  man- 
ner of  scientific  topics;  such  letters 
must  at  least  have  been  more  agreeable 
to  read  than  the  missives  that  periodi- 
cally consigned  the  infidel  (as  others 
consigned  Carlyle  and  Renan)  to  per- 
dition. Spencer  was  too  remote  from 
the  average  intelligence  to  excite  the 
wrath  of  the  damnation-monger,  and 
he  was  too  high  above  the  struggling 
crowd  to  be  made  a  father-confessor  by 
souls  in  pain,  as  were  Kingsley,  Car- 
lyle, and  Newman.  But  he  was  con- 
tinually applied  to  by  men  occupying 
public  positions  who  were  perplexed 
by  social  problems.  Australians  sought 
his  counsel  on  the  employment  of  black 
labor  in  the  canefields,  and,  uncompro- 
215 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

mising  Radical  as  he  long  was,  he  was 
so  far  mfluenced  by  evolutionist  prin- 
ciples as  to  believe  that  Australia,  like 
Europe,  might  have  to  pass  through 
a  period  of  mitigated  slavery.  New 
Zealanders  desired  his  advice  on  the 
conflict  between  individualism  and  so- 
cialism, of  which  these  islands  are  now 
the  chief  theatre.  Letters  of  a  personal 
character  were  rare.  One  such  stands 
out  in  memory.  The  undergraduates 
of  the  oldest  Scottish  University  had 
nominated  him  as  their  Lord  Rector  — 
a  post  once  adorned  by  Mill,  Stanley, 
and  Froude.  It  is  understood  that 
he  would  have  been  elected;  but  he 
dreaded  the  excitement  of  delivering 
the  customary  address.  The  Senate 
of  the  University  then  took  advantage 
of  the  occasion  to  offer  him,  in  com- 
pany with  Professor  Jowett,  the  hon- 
orary degree  of  Doctor  of  Laws.  The 
remarkable  letter  in  which  he  refused 
216 


HERBERT     SPENCER 


to  accept  the  distinction  is  worthy  of 
being  placed  beside  the  more  indignant 
letter  that  Samuel  Johnson  addressed 
to  Lord  Chesterfield.  Had  such  a 
degree,  he  wrote,  been  o^ered  to 
him  when  he  was  young  and  strug- 
gling for  recognition,  it  would  have 
been  welcomed.  Now  that  he  had 
won  a  secure  position  absolutely  with- 
out aid  from  others  (for  even  his 
friends  had  been  shy  of  reviewing  his 
books),  he  no  longer  needed  it,  and  he 
was  indifferent  to  an  honor  that  he 
would  not  use.  The  Senatus  Acade- 
micus  might  have  replied  that  even  its 
own  older  members  —  philosophically 
trained  men  like  the  head  of  the  Uni- 
versity, Principal  Tulloch,  and  its  most 
brilliant  professor,  James  Frederick 
Ferrier  —  had  been  repelled  by  the 
novelty  of  his  ideas  and  his  forbidding 
terminology.  A  new  generation  had 
to  grow  up  that  would  appreciate  him 
217 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

at  his  true  value,  and  crown  him  with 
very  different  laurels.  Degrees,  di- 
plomas, candidatures,  and  presidencies 
came  afterwards  knocking  at  his  door, 
and  he  put  them  all  aside  without  os- 
tentation and  without  a  pang. 

His  correspondence  cleared  out  of 
the  way,  fully  two  and  a  half  hours 
remained  for  the  morning's  work.  He 
used  to  say  that  he  found  reading  and 
reflecting  about  equally  hard.  To  an 
observer,  reading  seemed  to  be  much 
the  harder.  As  he  read,  a  look  of  tense 
and  almost  painful  concentration  came 
over  his  face,  while  the  act  of  dictation 
betrayed  scarcely  an  effort.  Smoking 
half  of  a  cigar  to  promote  the  mental 
flow  (the  cigar  carefully  cut  in  two  to 
prevent  excess),  his  voice  never  rising 
or  falling,  the  eye  faintly  lit  up  with 
the  thinker's  far-away  look,  but  never 
burning  with  the  prophet's  flame,  with- 
out changes  of  physiognomy  or  a  single 
218 


HERBERT     SPENCER 


gesture,  and  (unlike  Goethe,  Cousin, 
or  Helos)  always  seated,  he  passion- 
lessly  unrolled  the  panorama  of  his 
thought.  There  was  no  battle.  Noth- 
ing recalled  Paul  Janet's  description 
of  Victor  Cousin,  "  seeking  with  pain 
and  labor,  stumbling  and  groping,  vex- 
ing himself,  and  finding  nothing." 
Never  was  he  baffled.  Never  had  he 
to  cast  his  work  aside,  as  even  Mill  had 
to  do,  till  a  process  of  "unconscious 
cerebration ' '  removed  the  obstacles. 
He  never  reconstructed  his  sentences, 
or  began  again,  or  patched,  or  threw 
out,  or  greatly  added.  The  tragi-com- 
edy  of  the  thinker's  life,  when  he  digs 
in  his  brain  for  thoughts  and  finds  it 
empty,  was  unknown  to  him.  His 
mind  was  always  full  to  overflowing. 
At  one  time  he  had  himself  read  to, 
and  the  writer  selected  the  vivid  his- 
tory of  "  The  Anglo-Saxons  in  Eng- 
land," written  by  Tennyson's  "latter 
219 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

day  Luther,"  John  Mitchell  Kemble. 
But  he  could  not  endure  more  than  a 
paragraph  or  at  the  most  two.  The 
amount  of  thought  the  reading  excited 
in  him  demanded  utterance,  and  he 
proceeded  to  dictate  matter  which  he 
considered  valuable  enough  to  be  pre- 
served. In  one  of  the  few  passages  in 
his  writings  that  reveal  an  intuitive 
insight  into  human  nature  he  speaks 
of  individuals  whose  thoughts  come  in 
single  file,  and  who  have  in  conse- 
quence to  retire  to  the  quiet  bypaths 
of  life.  His  own  thoughts  came  in 
platoons,  and  the  difficulty  was  to 
marshal  them.  His  style  of  thinking, 
like  his  way  of  life,  has  been  described 
as  mechanical.  If  so,  it  was  a  very 
deep  sort  of  mechanism.  To  one  who 
through  many  a  forenoon  saw  limb 
after  limb  and  organ  after  organ  of 
some  scientific  structure  appear  and 
take  shape,  till  all  at  length  grew  to- 
220 


HERBERT     SPENCER 


gether  into  a  natural  whole,  it  rather 
seemed  to  be  an  organic  process  that 
had  Nature's  own  sanction. 

At  the  end  of  a  month  he  subjected 
the  manuscript  to  a  careful  revision, 
generally  condensing,  putting  a  word 
for  a  phrase  and  an  apter  word  or  phrase 
for  one  less  apt,  but  otherwise  altering 
little.  He  then  carried  the  MS.  to  the 
printmg  office,  having  too  little  confi- 
dence in  a  government  institution  to 
intrust  it  to  the  post-office.  He  re- 
vised it  in  the  first  proof,  in  the  revise, 
and  in  the  final  revise ;  and  in  all  three 
it  was  read  by  an  assistant,  whose  sug- 
gestions, not  often  important,  were  re- 
spectfully heeded.  So  much  care  did 
he  lavish  on  all  his  work. 

Needless  to  say,  his  conversation  was 
interesting  as  few  men's  is.  A  distin- 
guished American  writer  was  travel- 
ling with  him  in  the  English  Midlands 
early  in  the  70' s,  but  left  him  abruptly, 
221 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

for  a  melancholy  reason  that  was  after- 
wards discovered.  Spencer  imagined, 
in  his  modesty,  that  it  was  because 
his  American  acquaintance  was  disap- 
pointed with  the  intercourse  he  had 
with  the  philosopher.  Disappointment 
in  some  cases  was  quite  possible.  His 
thought  had  certain  limitations  and  his 
manner  certain  hardnesses  that  repelled 
minds  of  a  particular  order,  as  I  think 
they  at  one  time  repelled  Mr.  Grlad- 
stone;  but  when  these  peculiarities 
were  allowed  for  (as  Griadstone  came 
to  do),  or,  it  may  be,  sympathized  with, 
disappointment  was  out  of  the  question. 
His  wealth  of  scientific  knowledge  and 
his  inexhaustible  abundance  of  new 
ideas  made  his  conversation  a  source  of 
rare  instruction  and  unfailing  delight. 
In  point  of  mere  style  it  was  often 
enough  decousue.  He  would  plunge 
into  a  long  sentence  without  knowing 
how  it  was  to  end,  pile  up  qualifications 
222 


HERBERT     SPENCER 


and  parentheses,  diverge  on  this  side 
and  that,  leap  over  all  obstacles,  and 
finally  arrive  at  his  goal,  not  that  he 
had  finished  what  he  had  to  say,  but 
politeness  bade  him  stop.  He  was  at 
his  best  with  single  interlocutors,  espe- 
cially with  one  of  his  peers,  like  Lewes 
or  Bain.  His  superiority  was  then  un- 
mistakable. He  had  none  of  Huxley's 
wit  or  ready  sword  play,  though  his 
capacity  for  devising  all  manner  of 
arguments  in  support  of  any  position 
he  might  take  up  made  him  a  formid- 
able debater.  But  what  struck  one 
most  on  such  occasions  was  his  sagacity. 
His  thought  was  usually  deeper  and 
always  wider  than  that  of  his  inter- 
locutor. Considerations  the  other  had 
overlooked  or  facts  unknown  to  him 
were  brought  to  light  and  seemed  to 
change  the  whole  complexion  of  the 
matter  in  hand.  With  younger  men 
he  was  often  eager  and  impetuous; 
223 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

with  his  cequales  he  was  calm,  grave,  and 
measured.  Had  he  been  fortunate 
enough  to  find  a  judicious  Boswell,  he 
might  figure  in  the  eyes  of  posterity  as 
advantageously  as  the  Sage  of  Weimar 
in  Eckermann's  hypnotic  restorations,^ 
or  the  Prophet  of  Chelsea  in  Sir  Charles 
Gavan  Duffy's  more  literal  transcripts, 
or  the  old  Scottish  rabbi  who  held  with 
Professor  Knight  those  high  metaphysi- 
cal and  theological  "  Colloquia  Peripa- 
tetica  "  on  the  sands  at  Elie. 

Like  Henry  VIII,  Spencer  knew  how 
to  say  and  do  the  right  thing  with  men, 
but  he  was  not  equally  felicitous  with 
women.  An  accomplished  lady,  once 
well  known  in  literature,  used  to  say 
that  always,  when  she  was  talking  with 
him,  she  "  felt  as  if  she  were  being 
rubbed  the  wrong  way."    Perhaps  it 

^  See  in  the  "Conversations  with  Goethe"  Ecker- 
mann's curious  account  of  the  trance-like  mood  into  which 
he  wrought  himself  before  he  could  recall  Goethe's  talk. 
Did  it  affect  the  accuracy  of  the  report? 

224 


HERBERT      SPENCER 


is  true  that  in  his  earlier  and  middle 
years,  when  he  had  taken  up  with  un- 
popular opinions  and  was  tabooed  in 
literature  in  company  with  other  scien- 
tific heretics  of  the  day,  he  expected  to 
meet  with  opposition,  especially  from 
women,  and  armed  himself  in  advance. 
A  man  does  not  nurse  such  a  humor 
without  being  the  worse  for  it.  But 
it  doubtless  passed  away  as  opposition 
grew  rarer  or  more  respectful,  and  as 
his  views  were  received  with  greater 
sympathy.  Still,  it  remains  a  fact  that, 
like  Fitzjames  Stephen,  who  had  "  never 
known  a  woman  that  was  worth  talk- 
ing to  for  five  minutes  together,"  he 
was  too  purely  masculine  to  do  full 
justice  to  the  other  sex.  That  he  knew 
G-eorge  Eliot  and  admired  her  was  due 
probably  to  the  fact  that  he  never  re- 
garded the  great  novelist  as  a  normal 
woman. 
Sainte-Beuve  gives  it  as  the  key  to  La 
16  225 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

Rochefoucauld  that  the  cynical  moralist 
was  never  able  to  put  his  whole  per- 
sonality into  anything  that  he  did  in 
practical  life.  No  such  remark  could 
be  made  of  Spencer.  Whether  it  was 
work  or  play,  he  was  totus  in  illo.  He 
cultivated  all  sorts  of  indoor  and  out- 
of-door  games  as  safety-valves.  Into 
every  one  of  them  he  threw  himself  as 
if  he  had  no  other  pursuit.  He  played 
billiards  through  many  a  long  dull  even- 
ing when  he  could  not  read  and  dared 
not  reflect.  When  lawn  tennis  came 
in,  he  took  to  it  eagerly.  He  was  always 
ready  to  join  in  or  get  up  a  picnic,  be- 
lieving that  the  loss  of  time  was  amply 
compensated  by  the  gain  in  energy. 
In  a  riverside  excursion,  boating  on 
the  Thames  or  wandering  through  the 
grounds  at  Rosherville  or  Hampton 
Court,  he  was  delightful,  never  appar- 
ently thinking  of  his  work  or  himself, 
yet  full  of  ideas  and  abounding  in  ob- 
226 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

servations,  and  with  many  a  hearty 
laugh  at  each  light  joke.  In  the  same 
lovely  scenes  I  have  noticed  a  distin- 
guished savant  (personally  among  the 
best  of  men,  but  with  this  single  failing) 
forge  slightly  ahead  of  his  companion, 
his  cloak  thrown  over  his  shoulder,  his 
head  bent,  and  a  look  of  mock-profound 
reflection  on  his  face,  as  if  he  were  dis- 
entangling some  knotty  problem,  while 
his  companion  hardly  knew  whether 
to  laugh  or  be  angry.  Not  such  was 
Spencer. 

He  was,  of  course,  a  personage  in 
London  society,  and  a  hostess  was 
sometimes  more  enthusiastic  than  dis- 
criminating. One  lady  addressed  him 
as  "Dear  Mr.  Spencer  Herbert"; 
another  exchanged  her  personality  with 
his,  and  absent-mindedly  subscribed 
her  letter  of  invitation:  "Yours  truly, 
Herbert  Spencer."  He  on  his  side 
was  often  playful  in  reply.  He  did  not 
227 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

go  to  "  at  homes ' '  or  receptions,  the 
hours  of  such  gatherings  being  usually 
later  than  he  cared  to  stay  out  of  bed ; 
but  about  three  evenings  a  week  he 
dined  out,  generally  refusing  invitations 
for  two  successive  evenings. 

Much  of  his  leisure  time  was  passed 
at  the  Athenaeum  Club.  Every  after- 
noon he  walked  across  Kensington 
Gardens,  Hyde  Park,  and  the  Grreen 
Park  to  the  palatial  building  in  Pall 
Mall.  There  he  met  with  most  of  his 
friends  and  sought  the  distraction  of 
conversation.  There  he  played  billiards 
almost  daily,  and  there,  when  he  had 
no  engagement,  he  dined.  There  the 
principal  of  a  Scottish  university, 
whose  biography  has  been  attractively 
written  by  Mrs.  Oliphant,  saw  "the 
great  philosopher  S.  gloating  over  his 
dinner  with  unphilosophic  eyes,  and 
afterwards   moving   about  among  his 

friends  with  the  air  of  a  man  of  the 

228 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

world  acquired  too  late  in  life."  That 
is  deadly,  and  it  is  not  even  half 
true.  The  jolly  principal,  who  "  moved 
about "  so  very  like  a  god  in  the  little 
university  town  where  he  dwelt,  looked 
vastly  more  as  if  he  thoroughly  enjoyed 
a  good  dinner  than  ever  the  dyspeptic 
philosopher  can  have  done.  "An 
Epicurean  in  theory,  and  a  Stoic  in 
practice ' '  was  the  account  given,  by 
no  means  of  Principal  Tulloch,  but  of 
Herbert  Spencer,  by  one  of  Tulloch's 
colleagues  and  friends,  —  the  late  ami- 
able Professor  Spencer  Baynes. 

Though  he  liked  active  sports,  he 
took  kindly  to  the  recreation  par  ex- 
cellence of  the  meditative  man,  and 
almost  every  autumn  he  went  to  Perth- 
shire or  Argyleshire  for  a  month's 
trout  or  salmon  fishing.  He  disap- 
proved of  field  sports  on  the  score  of 
their  cruelty,  but  defended  angling  be- 
cause fishes  are  cold-blooded  animals. 
229 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

It  is  difficult  to  perceive  where  the 
difference  lies.  No  one  who  has  seen 
a  fish  dying  in  the  bottom  of  a  boat, 
watched  its  convulsive  struggles,  and 
observed  the  bright  hues  fade,  can 
doubt  that  its  death-agony  is  only  less 
sore  (if  it  is  less  sore)  than  that  of 
the  mammal.  That  a  difference  of  de- 
gree at  length  makes  a  difference  of 
kind  is,  it  is  true,  the  very  soul  of 
evolution. 

Such  was  one  of  the  greatest  thinkers 
of  the  nineteenth  century  as  he  lived 
and  moved  among  his  fellows  —  his 
bodily  appearance  and  ways  of  life,  his 
work  and  his  play,  his  individual  effort 
and  his  social  intercourse.  "  How 
rare"  and  (in  spite  of  half  a  century's 
impaired  health)  "  how  fortunate !  " 
may  we  not  say  with  John  Burroughs 
of  Emerson!  And  surely  we  may 
add:  "How  serene,  how  inspiring!" 
Once  and  again  the  Transcendentalist 
230 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

descended  into  the  arena  to  do  battle 
for  a  cause  —  for  the  expatriated  In- 
dians and  the  unemancipated  negroes ; 
but  no  cloud  shadowed  his  unalterable 
calm.  Not  once  or  twice,  but  many- 
times,  the  Evolutionist  had  to  contend 
for  convictions  that  were  dear  to  him 
as  life ;  but  a  single  occasion  excepted, 
his  composure  was  ever  unruffled,  and 
never  once  did  he  forget  the  amenities 
that  high  thought  imposes  on  its  vo- 
taries. He  was  never  trivial.  He  once 
rebuked  a  gossiping  questioner  by  a 
quotation  from  Shakspere  about  "  the 
meanness  of  common  knowledge."  He 
seldom  expressed  a  disparaging  opin- 
ion about  either  individuals  or  books. 
Hostile  judgments  had  to  be  wnmg  out 
of  him.  "  What  did  he  think  of  a  cele- 
brated scholar  whom  he  met  with  in 
Egypt?  "  He  at  last  confessed  that  he 
was  repelled  by  the  other's  "  sceptical 
habit  of  mind."  It  was  the  Agnostic 
231 


HERBERT      SPENCER 

that  was  the  believer  and  the  Christian 
minister  who  was  the  unbeliever.  He 
practised,  as  he  constantly  preached, 
the  social  duty  of  forgiveness.  He  had 
broken  with  James  Martineau  because 
the  Unitarian  had  been  guilty  of  mis- 
representing his  views  in  an  article 
published  in  the  old  "  National  Re- 
view" (''misrepresentation"  was  one 
of  his  key  words),  but  in  after  years  he 
made  up  this  quarrel  with  his  really 
gentle  critic;  and,  excepting  that  he 
used  to  condemn  Martineau' s  hetero- 
clite  style,  there  was  never  a  word  of 
disparagement.  He  was  at  all  times 
(with  rare  exceptions)  heartily  appre- 
ciative of  the  work  and  thought  of 
others.  The  Congregationalists  were 
pleased  with  his  impartial  eulogy  of  a 
philosophical  work  written  by  a  pro- 
fessor in  one  of  their  colleges,  and  the 
author  of   a  treatise   on   ethics  wrote 

(not  to  him)  that  his  few  laudatory 
232 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

lines  had  "strengthened  the  bond  be- 
twixt disciple  and  master."  In  his 
later  years  especially  he  took  pleasure 
in  practising  that  gospel  of  encourage- 
ment preached  by  an  English  Noncon- 
formist and  in  distributing  words  of 
praise  to  younger  writers.  His  verdict 
was  eagerly  sought  and  much  prized. 
He  was  animated  by  nothing  less  than 
a  passion  of  justice,  and  in  all  busi- 
ness transactions  he  was  punctual 
and  exact.  But  he  was  also  generous 
and  charitable  and  gave  almost  beyond 
his  means  where  giving  was  needed. 
Where  aid  of  a  practical  kind  was  re- 
quired, he  was  unweariable;  and  a 
hundred  anecdotes  of  his  helpfulness 
could  be  related.  "  They  tell  me  thou 
art  great,  Walter,"  said  the  uncle  of 
Scott  to  the  Wizard  of  the  North; 
"but  thou  wast  always  good."  Her- 
bert Spencer  had  little  of  Scott's 
native  sweetness  of  disposition,  but 
233 


HERBERT     SPENCER 

he  went  far  towards  realizing  the 
"pious  wish"  expressed  in  Schiller's 
distich  by  uniting,  in  no  common 
measure,  essential  goodness  with  true 
greatness. 


234 


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